shokod or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Move

but where's the beat?

2008-10-25T18:29:00.006-06:00

Hello my lovelies, time sure does fly fast, innit? I've been here winding down my well-wound whirlwind winsome wintry semester with a smorgasbord of studying. October is almost over (jeez, it feels like just yesterday she was taking her first steps and eating crayons) and exams are nigh. We have one more week of classes, then a week and a half SWOT-VAC (the ugly-guttural acronym denoting the Study WithOut Teaching Vacation period) followed by several exams. On the weekend we have our MSAT - the practical examination. What it will consist of is several stations with different tasks. It'll be 2 stations where we have to take a history, 1 station where we have to demonstrate clinical reasoning, 1 station where we do a physical exam of some sort, 1 station where we impress our knowledge of life support/procedure stuff, and then 1 communication station. Clinical reasoning is the one that's different from last year and is pretty cool. We get a sheet of paper with a fake patient's medical history and then the history of what brought them here. We then give our top differential diagnoses, defending and pointing out holes in those decisions, and then get narrowed down by asking about physical exam stuff and investigations and what those lead to. It's almost like being a doctor... weird. The communication one will be a bit trickier this year. Last year it was pretty much "talk to the patient who has some non-medical problem and don't be an asshole". This year it's going to either be breaking bad news to a patient (you have cancer! your son has 1 year to live!) or doing what's known as motivational interviewing - the process that assesses how willing someone is to change habit X (their obesity) and trying to get them to understand why it's bad (because they're fat) and how to fix it (stop eating). They're both pretty tricky to do. The life support/procedure thing will probably be okay. It'll either be advanced CPR plus defibrillation and giving them adrenaline/epinephrine or setting up and reading an ECG. Hopefully.
Several days afterwards we have our written exams. Now I'm going to admit something that I'm really embarassed about. In fact, I have not talked about it with anyone who's not in school with me because it makes me feel ashamed. *deep breath* We write our own exam questions.
Our school got some grant to do some sort of psychological assessment on students' anxiety and stress associated with exams and are trying to test and see if students will be less stressed out if they've written and seen the questions and answers ahead of time. This is apparently an existant area of education research in which our School is dipping its feet. I wish they had given me the $26,500 grant and I could have told them, "yes, it will lower our stress". So the actual practicalities of this project is that each of the 40 small groups in our year had to write 1 multiple choice question and 1 short answer question. We also had to write a model answer and reference it, as well as decide what's the minimum amount of info to pass the question. We uploaded all these questions and their answers, after minute screening by the powers-that-be, and they are available for all. We were told that 25% of our final exams will consist of these questions. So essentially, everyone's memorising all the questions and the answers, because it's guaranteed to be a huge hit on the exam. There's SO much material we cover in a year and so a big problem is trying to study everything well and knowing what's important and so this is helpful. Yes, stress reduced. Duh. The project has met some criticism and in my opinion has some issues of its own. Some of the people in our year are total jerkfaces and write ridiculously specific questions that, had most people got on a regular exam, would be very tough to question. Some people are the kind of jerkfaces who don't actually put a real amount of work into it and therefore post a question with the answer being incorrect. Now is where it gets really annoying and tricky - once the questions are posted (up to a certain date) the school is legally bound to keep them up there, with whatever answer was written and therefore bound to give credit for whatever answer is online. This means, especially for multiple choice questions graded by a computer, that you have to memorise the wrong answer to get the point! The mechanism of ways a mind can get boggled is complex and poorly understood.
So there's that.
I've been studying a lot... it equates to everyother day being a late night. Monday was til midnight. Tuesday I had class 8-6pm and so took it easy afterwards. Wednesday I diddle around during the day and then had dinner with a friend and then went to another friend's night-shift work thing to keep him company and study. Studied til 3:15 which is far-and-away the latest I've ever studied. I was never one for all-nighters, choosing instead to follow the early-to-bed adage and make sure I'm functional in the morning for the eventual exam. His place of work was pretty cool and another shining example of good policy that they have here and it lacking in the US. It's a needle-safety program located in the heart of the city, with 24hour staff/nurse, that gives 100% for free and anonymously sterile needles, water, swabs, education, condoms, etc. They ask a few question for statistical purposes and then offload the 20pack of syringes the person just asked for. It's very cool and, especially on a Wednesday, chilled as well and so perfect for study. I'm afraid, though, that in the US this would be met with the same kind of knee-jerk reactions that fight giving condoms to teenagers for the risk that it will promote promiscuity. Thursday studied all day and then had a friend over for dinner. Friday class and study all day and then went out in the evening. A friend was having a fundraising thing for a trip to Africa this winter to help build schools or something and had a movie/hor'sdoeuvre's (however the fuck that's spelled) thing. I got there a bit late and quickly downed 4 glasses of wine before starting the movie. Excellent idea. The movie was called A Walk to Beautiful and was a nice documentary about an impressive hospital in Ethiopia that repairs fistulas (connections between uterus/bladder or uterus/rectum and any other combination) that occurs from long and difficult pregnancies. These women face enormous stigma and adversity in their villages and families and so, if they can, go there and get fixed and it gives them a new life. Powerful shit. Yesterday was Saturday and consisted of the usual markets, lunch, study, dinner with friends and some computer shit.
I've been having a (un)healthy addiction recently to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report lately. I discovered about a month ago that you can watch the most recent 3 weeks-or-so of episodes online, streaming, fast, with no advertisements on the show's respective website. The material has been so good recently, as well, that the episodes have no option but to shine. I'll watch between 1 and 3 episodes a day nowadays and am almost caught up with what's going on in this falling-apart world of ours.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Here's something that I was more than pleased to learn about: drinking diet sodas are associated with more weight gain than not drinking soda! That's right, several thousand people's drinking habits and subsequent changes in size. People who drank more than 3 artificially-sweetened beverages a day had about a doubled risk in increasing their BMI. I've tried to find why this happened and I've come to two reasonable but slightly contradictory ideas: a) the body is getting a sugar-like substance in terms of taste and so is acting like it's getting sugar (in terms of metabolism etc) but when the calories aren't there, it bumps up the craving thus promoting these people to go and get more sugar/calories from other sources and thus increase their weight or b)the body is getting this stuff that is like sugar and so is treating the rest of the intake (which isn't perhaps excessive taking into account the "0 calories" of the soda) like it is in excess and as such is promoting storage of foods into fat, getting ready for a famine or whatever. I think those make sense and am definitely happy to accept that that nastiness is not good for you. Definitely not a healthy food, considering there's nothing food-like in it.
Medical word of the post:
Anosognosia - ignorance of the presence of a disease; being unaware of one's own illness.

the difference between genius and insanity is measured only by a cannula

2008-10-11T18:24:00.002-06:00

G'day. I just got out of my very first drug trial and boy is my arm tired. I've always been interested in the world (money) of drug trials and thought I'd give it a shot. There's a place quite near my hospital/main classroom that does them; a few friends have gone and said they were legit so I decided to give it a go. The way these work is that some company (GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, etc) has some drug in some phase of development that they need to test. They pay this company, which has the facilities and staff for monitoring stuff, to do some sort of trial on the drug. Drug trials are broken down by phases. The Pre-clinical Phase is when they design the drug in the lab and then test it in vitro and on animals, at highly varied doses, to see if there are any serious adverse effects and if it works the way they want to. Next they move on to Phase 0, where they test very small amounts of the drug on very few people, to figure out a bit more how the drug is metabolized and what pharmacokinetics (the pathways of degeneration and activity of the drug in the body) are important to consider. Phase 1 tests the drug on a smallish amount of healthy people to see what the bioavailability (how much drug is in the body after 1hr, 2hrs, 1day, etc) is like and how the drug is metabolised, as well as any adverse reactions. Phase 2 is on a larger group of people and now, in addition to the aforementioed stuff, they will also check if it has any efficacy in the thing it's actually testing for (eg high blood pressure, diabetes, etc). Phase 3 is the ultimate one: a randomised and controlled trial on a large group of people with the disease/condition on whom efficacy is going to be tested - it is this Phase that helps bring home the bacon.
I was on a Phase 1 trial for a newly released generic version of exemestane. Trade name Aromasin, this drug has been around for like 20 years, as an anti-breast cancer drug in post-menopausal women. After 20 years, a drug company loses the patent on its drug and is forced to reveal the formula, so other companies can make their own versions, especially allowing for generics to be made. One of the reasons I was cool with this trial was because the drug has already been around for a while and this is for a generic version (which I whole-heartedly approve of); the others included that I only had to take 1 pill and the timing and money situation suited me. I had to go in from 7am yesterday (Sat) until 9am today (Sun) and then come in in the morning for the next 4 days. Then do all that again at the end of the month. This gets me $1030 tax-free*. This obviously sounds annoying but I'm actually happy for it since, as I mentioned, the place is near my school and I have a problem getting up early and getting study on, so this will force me to do so.
What was the thing actually like? I got there in the morning, after being told not to have any alcohol, chocolate, caffeine, or grapefruit juice the day before and not to have eaten since 9:30PM the night before, and got a cannula put in. This is access to my veins. We were given a light breakfast and then the drug (they did the thing where they checked under the tongue/in the cheek) and then had a small amount of blood withdrawn every 15 minutes for an hour, then every 30 minutes for 2 hours, then every hour for 3 hours, then 2 hrs later, then 4 hrs later, then 8hrs later in the morning before I left. This may sound annoying but actually is not a big deal at all - the amount of blood is minute enough so you don't feel it and you have nothing to do anyway. I was idealising the experience the whole time, "Wow, I'm getting paid to have a WHOLE day where I'm fed and don't have to do anything... I can study and catch up on internet stuff and watch stuff etc." Oh, how young and idealistic we are... Here's what I did: watched half of Jackie Brown, read more than half of Trust me I'm a (Junior) Doctor, watch 1 episode of Man vs Wild, 4 episodes of The Mighty Bouche, an hour each of Blood Diamond and The Hunt for the Red October, spent an hour reading recipes/looking at pictures on tastespotting, tried to understand what's going on in the economy, and did about 30 minutes of study. Yay. My eyes hurt from all that. I also took a bit of a nap and ate a lot. I was pretty hungry when I got there (having fasted the night before and cycled to the place) and then waited for like 2 hours to get a tiny breakfast. Then 4 hours until lunch - I was quite worried that I was being treated like a post-menopausal woman with regards to her dietary needs. But then we started getting a lot more food and I was happy. I was a bit surprised that we were eating hospital food (for that was whom was doing the catering) yet how not necessarily healthy it was. I had 2 big chunks of carrot cake, 1 lemon cake w/ cream, and 1 chocolate banana muffin, plus like 4 things of orange juice over the day. Talk about diabetic risk. As far as the actual drug goes, I didn't feel anything. I had a slight headache but I would much more easily chalk that up to confined space + air conditioning + fluorescent lighting + no exercise. The only weird thing was the crazy dream I had in the morning. In the dream, I was sleeping but semi-conscious and trying to wake myself up, but I literally couldn't do it. I heard nurses talking about me, saying that I was comatose and not knowing what they should do, and I was like in the mostly-asleep phase (in the dream, remember) and tried to tell them that I was okay and I remember literally shaking myself in order to wake myself up in the dream and then eventually woke myself up in real life. So weird. You know when you're on the cusp of sleep and you semi-dream but are still conscious (the so-called hypnagogic state)? That's what my dream felt like. Weird. If that happens next time, I'm chalking it up to the meds.
So that's that. The rest of my week was pretty decent. I started it by flying too close to the sun and subsequently getting burned. Monday I was in the library until midnight and then Tuesday I was in class/hospital/study from 8am-6pm with no real break. As a result, I was pretty ineffective the rest of the week. On Wednesday I went out to a fish and chips place for a friend's dinner. On Thursday a bunch of people met up for an evening/night BBQ at South Bank - the sweet park and artificial beach that sits on top of a river across from downtown. We sat around eating and drinking and then at 11pm went for a swim. It was so beautiful - we were the only ones there, a nice night, looking at the city, playing catch with a frisbee/nerf. I was talked into going out afterwards and so only got home at like 2:30 and then had to wake up at 7 for class. On Friday I got my head shorn in time for summer (which has been put on hiatus for the last couple days for whatever reason) and then went to a fancy annual lecture thing. Each year the school of medicine tries to get someone fancy pants to talk to us about their accomplishments, as well as dole out teaching prizes to best clinical teachers of the past years. This year the guy speaking was Graem Clark - the guy who invented the bionic ear (cochlear implant). His story was actually pretty impressive... he worked hard for about 30some years and as a trained doctor had to pretty much teach himself audiology and engineering and stuff. Also everyone else around him told him that it was impossible to do. And now over 100,000 people have the thing and they can hear. Pretty incredible. Afterwards there was free booze and food but because of my damn trial I could only stuff my face until 9:30 (10) and eschew all (1 glass) of alcohol.
Today the weather is pretty miserable and I feel a bit groggy. I must tutor later and then dumpster dive - who knows what treasures the dumpster will hold?
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Yawning, I recently learned from an anatomy tutor, is to aid in pumping an extra oomph of blood back in to the center. The action of the yawn is caused by the lateral pterygoid muscle, and this contraction physcially induces force on the veins in the face, which helps pump blood back into the heart. Muscle-induced blood pumping is one of the main mechanisms that veins have of returning blood. The calf muscles are also useful for this, which is why when you do the full yawn/stretch thing, you also plantarflex (tippy-toes) your feet to return blood that's been pooling down there.
Last week was female sexual pathology stuff and we got to learn all about periods. This contained a very ample amount of information that I didn't know. Like how menopause can be like one long 6-month period, or that a lot of women get menorrhagia (increased amount/time of bleeding) and that this can be diagnosed by: longer than 7 days; greater than 80mls/cycle; changing pad less than every 3 hours; needing "double protection" (pad + tampon); loss of clots, etc. How do you know it's 80mls? Apparently some researchers spent time weighing/wringing out pads and tampons. For your own knowledge, 1 tampon is roughly equivalent to 5mls and 1 pad is about 10-15mls.
We also got to learn about the wide-world of contraception. It's amazing how much shit there is, and all for women, to prevent pregnancy. Pills and IUDs made of copper and rings and depot-shots and implanted pieces of rubber (which is definitely the one I'd go for). We also got a definitive answer on that oft-queried problem: is it cool to skip the sugar pills and keep taking the pill in order to "skip" a period? "Hells yah! Just try to have a bleed 4 times a year," is what they recommend. I was doing a bit of my own research into male contraception and found this thing, which seems awesome and I'd be willing to try out. There are other possiblities out there but, unfortunately, nothing that's really marketed well besides condoms and good ol' coitus interruptus.
Medical word of the post:
Pseudocyesis - the false belief that you are pregnant based on physical cues (no period, morning sickness, abdominal mass), despite evidence that you are not.

*I'm supposed to declare it myself

Q: What's long, brown, and sticky?

2008-10-10T18:29:00.003-06:00

A: A fucking big stick insect.
I was sitting on my veranda, innocently having lunch, when I heard some rustling in the gutters. I thought it was a bird or possum or something. Then the thing crashed next to my foot and I saw that it was a disgustingly-large stick inset. It started crawling around, pathetically, searching for relief. I ran and grabbed my camera and came back. It was obviously on its last disgustingly-long legs, after, I assume, being pecked at by a bird or something. I'd say it was about 12-13 inches long, with long legs and butterfly wings. It crawled around the veranda for a bit and then clung to the side thing. After a while, it fell to its death - tired and shattered. Incidentally, its blood was green - who knew?

it's like 12 twice

2008-10-04T02:21:00.006-06:00

Well a lot has happened since we last had the pleasure. How are you? Oh really? Jeez, yeah.
So the day after my previous post was my birth'd day. The whole festivations started out by going out on the eve for dinner at a Korean restaurant that I liked. The weather was really eerie... it seemed like it was going to storm and weird smells and colours. On my bike ride into the city, the only other life form I saw (it was a Sunday) was a possum, a heron standing in the middle of the path, and a woman jogging in white sneakers, a nice black skirt, and a lace black bra. Fun. After dinner we went to a Belgian beer garden thing and got some fancy beer that tasted like cherry. A lot.
On Monday morning a friend dropped off cupcakes spelling out a birthday wish, which was quite cute. School was pretty good in that vain as well. Normally I don't really care about my birthday... this time was not much different but it was still pretty cool since I actually have a decent group here and so reaped rewards. Speaking of rewards, here's what I got:
2 sets of cupcakes, 1 cake in the shape of a baby seal (long story-> short = there's an ongoing "joke" that I get off on baby seal porn), 3 bottles of wine, wood chopping board, and then an awesome package from a bunch of people of a silicon rolling pin, gift certificate to Kathmandu, and 5 movie passes to a decent cinema. Cleaned up quite well, I must admit. Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, dinners. Monday night I had a nice dinner at a friends place, Thursday had a friend over for dinner, and then the following Monday I went to another mate's place where they cooked up a sweet feast. All this culminated... or at least fruitioned... at a BBQ/picnic thing at the everglorious New Farm Park. It was a beautiful day... blue skies, lots of sun, lots of people, sitting by the river. Everyone brought so much food and I made a kickass salad + lentil burgers + roastded chickpeas. It was one of the lovelier days I've had, I must say.So what else has happened... on Wednesday a couple of us in our clinical-coaching group when to a psychiatric hospital to get a bit of experience in taking a mental health interview. 4 of us plus a psychiatrist took turns and time interviewing 2 patients, one with schizophrenia and one with severe depression. It was very interesting and really sad. I think that, like with a lot of kinds of medicine, you must build a callus to protect yourself in order to not get too despondent with sick people. I think these ones being physically well but with these debilitating mental problems is even sadder. The schizophrenic guy didn't even know why he was in hospital; he gets brought in by the cops every couple months for doing something weird. He was valedictorian of his highschool up until 11th grade and then the condition just snapped and that is that. The woman with depression has had a number of failed suicide attempts, is ostracised from her whole family, and was sexually abused as a child. I think maybe dealing with kidneys would be easier...
Last night a friend came over for dinner and then we walked into the city to put to use my movie passes. We saw Waltz with Dashir, a nice and stylistically-cool movie about the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. However it was the wrong movie to come drunk to and drink a bottle of wine in.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
We recently have been learning a bit about the commercialization of medicine. This is not really much of an issue in the US because, like most things there, commercializing is fair game. Here there are some pretty stringent rules as to how to advertise for a medical business (drugs are not even mentioned since it's illegal to advertise prescription medicine); stuff like making outlandish claims or guarantees, offering pro-bono things or inducements are all bad... just like claiming expertise in something you're not or bashing other doctors. We had a speaker from an organisation that deals with advertising and communication and he discussed a suit against the company that sold those ab-electric-belt-stimulator-things as a weight loss device. Apparently, according to witness testimony, those belts, in 10 minutes, burn as many calories as walking 1km/hr for 1 second. Lolicans. Anyway it's been interesting to think about, though apparently not to write about...
In addition to commercialisation of medicine, last week we were studying sexual dysfunction and that kind of fun stuff (the context was clinics advertising guaranteed erections etc). One funny example about lame companies and sexual dysfunction was the fruition of a relatively new diagnosis hypoactive desire disorder. Something like 20-30% of women (and 10% of men) suffer from a reduced sexual desire (reduced compared to what? I dunno). And so a company developed a testosterone patch that may increase libido but in order to make it approachable/necessary/desired/acceptable first had to medicalise this condition. So they released data compiled in cohoots with doctors and released information etc and essentially invented a market for their drug. Bastardos.
Speaking of sexual dysfunction, it was interesting to read about all the ways to treat erectile dysfunction. 1st line treatment is viagra and similar drugs, as most people know, and then it goes downhill from there. The next treatment is called alprostadil and it needs to be given locally in order to function which means either a "urethral suppository" or an injection straight into it. For some reason people don't like those that much... What's funny/scary about it is that if you aren't careful with dosing (your first injection has to be done at the doctor's) then you can develop priaprism: an erection that just won't subside. If it's around for several hours, then the first thing doctors try to do is give a decent amount of pseudoephedrine (the ingredient in Sudafed that's closely monitored and used to make meth) and wait around. If that doesn't work, then you get to physically drain it. Yay!Medical word of the post:
tumescence - a protruding or swelling; specifically used to describe the penis in the pre-fully-erect phase.

cyclothymia

2008-09-21T02:49:00.003-06:00

Jeez, it's been a great week. I bet you're jealous.
Last weekend I played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. I've never played in one before but was suckered in under the allure of a "med & friends" team. We played 3 games on Saturday and then 2 on Sunday morning. It was quite tiring and I performed like my normal mediocre self, but still it was a lot of fun and I felt great afterward. The tournament was pretty small and chill and involved food for the price. On Sunday after playing 2 hot games in a row, we went over to the pool for a pizza party. Contrary to pretty much any other event I've ever been to, there was a lot of pizza actually left over. I ended up eating 2 whole ones and then getting back on the bike to do the rest of the day.
I have been biking a shitload, actually. No small thanks to Rosie's parents. Her parents have been out of town for 2 months and they live in a nice house about 18km south of the city. A couple friends have been housesitting there and I've been housevisiting. Monday and Tuesday night I was convinced to ride out there: they were both beautiful, mild nights with a full moon and pretty much the whole ride is on a separate bike path. Drinking and watching movies and stuff. Loverly.
School was fairly low this week. The topic was bone tumours and, as they are ridiculously rare, there wasn't much to learn. Or, at least, there wasn't much that I was learning. On Wednesday night I went to play frisbee, as normal, but we had been kicked off our field for whatever reason and so had to play on an adjacent field. In the dark. With glow sticks. I know it sounds cool and maybe I'm getting grumpy in my old age, but it wasn't that fun. Half the people were playing "seriously" and half weren't and the light-up disc kept turning off at opportune moments. I was unsatisfied, to speak the truth.
On Friday night I went back out to the housesitting place to bake a birthday cake. It was the birthday of a girl who had done her PhD in malaria, and Rosie and I made an awesome cake in the shape of a mosquito and a brownie platter representing the life cycle of the malaria parasite within the bloodstream.
Saturday was a huge day. Cycled at 8:30 out to the markets from afar and then went home. From home I went on to a garage sale for a girl trying to do some fundraising to go to Uganda. I hung out there for a while and saw stuff that I had donated by bought by a friend, which is funny if you think about it. I also picked up a nice thermos and a cool tea kettle. From there I quickly went home, dropped off my shit, picked up some beers, and went to the birthday party. The birthday girl put up some amazing Sri Lankan curries (who knew?) and the chocolate cakes were a hit. We hung out, enjoying the stillness of the afternoon and the post-prandial bliss, not to mention several beers, chatting away. From there I went on to a Bollywood party, only to be greeted by more free curries and beer. I hung out there for a while, listening to some classic Bollywood hits, chatting with people in saris, and having jello shots for the first time out of college.
This morning I had to wake up early and tutor for 5 hours (two different students) at the beautiful State Library. I met a friend and we went next door for a quick peak at an art gallery that had a "Michael Jackson thing you have to see". The piece was done by some woman who had recruited 16 "die-hard" MJ fans, without checking out their dancing or singing skills, and then filmed them as they performed all of Thriller, in one small area. The piece was 16 parallel vertical screens, each with a different person, singing and dancing away to music that only they could hear. It may sound weird but it was actually pretty funny and nice. People were very different and listening to them all sing "together" without background music (especially starting all at once from a longish point with no singing) was very enjoyable. Now I'm still at the library, trying to do some work. But it's not working out.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Bone tumors piss me off. I mean, I apologise to all the bone tumorers out there, but they're just so far. In the UK, there are about 6 children with a Ewing's tumor each year. Since it's discovery nearly 100 years ago, there have been about 200 cases of an (admittedly awesome-named) adamantinoma. Talk about clinical relevance.
Also, how badly do you want leprosy?
Medical Word of the Post:
echolalia - a disorder where someone involuntarily repeats the same word several times

We only work when we need the money

2008-09-07T17:22:00.006-06:00

... you know the song.
I just had a week off and it was quite amazing, in fact. I think part of the fact was that this was my first truly selfish week of holiday I've had in a really long time - I wasn't "supposed" to see anyone/do anything and so I just did only what I wanted and that made it great. It involved lots of food, late nights, and more alcohol than is probably safe (who am I kidding, I know the guidelines). But before I delve in, I'd like to officially welcome Elijah Reinberg to the blogosphere. I hope you have very few returns. Now, back to me. My vacation started, I guess, with a bang. I was riding around town trying to find the cheapest wine I could (the place that had 12 bottles of decent wine for 45$ had sold out, obviously) when the crank (leg) of my bike just smashed. It was as limp as a war veteran's smile. Immediately it flashed through my mind that I needed to: go to dinner on one part of town, go to a Trivia night on another, go to a party back at the other side of town, go home on my part of town, and be in the city at 9am to tutor. Each of those involves crossing a river and public transportation is not great, especially late at night. Fuck, am I reliant upon my bike. I borrowed (commandeered) my housemate's but it was a road-bike and therefore not fun to ride. Either way the Trivia night was fun. It was run by a bunch of friends and I was at a table with a bunch other of friends. We didn't win diddly scot, of course, but at least I was dressed in a nasty yellow fluorescent shirt (because the party I was going to was a fluoro party). I also was pretty useless with the American questions (like what NASA stands for... administration?) although I did know all the Great Lakes so I got props for that. After that we rode over to the fluoro/emo party where people were wearing more ridiculous outfits than I (though I did end up with a fishnet vest over the shirt and, at one point, a pink wig) and danced the night away to music of sorts. Tutoring at 9am the next morning was less fun than normal.
Sunday, after picking up bread from my favorite rubbish bin, I went to a BBQ and then went to a friend's parent's house to indulge myself. I haven't seen a movie on a non-laptop screen in ages and so we brought some wine and snacks and watched a couple DVDs (to Be or Not to Be, Rushmore, and several episodes of The Goodies) in her parent's pad. It was definitely what I was supposed to be doing.
Monday was a simple day - I had a couple friends over for dinner and relaxed and prepped myself for the rest of the week.
Tuesday "morning" I got picked up by a car full of ladies and headed up north to Coolum, Sunshine Coast. One of the girl's husband's great aunt has a lovely beach house there, which we rented for 100$ for a week. We spent 3 nights and 3.5 days there and it was an amazing time. At any point there were at least 5 people there, plus more people trickled in and out throughout the time. The beach was a 7 minute walk away and so swimming was in order. There were big waves (due to the general blusteriness of the weather) for us to crash in. It wasn't exactly warm, though, so we never swam for more than 15 minutes. Mostly we lazed around and enshrouded ourselves in holidayiety. One morning it was raining down quite hard and 7 of us ran to the beach and went swimming even though it was surely drowning-weather and we were the only people out there. It was great. Other things we did was fly a kite, play boulles on the beach, read a lot, play cards/backgammon/scrabble/charades, eat a lot, and drink. I went for precisely 5 swims. You can see why I was unhappy to leave, can't you?Came back on Friday morning where, unfortunately, I had to do some driving through peak-hour traffic and then mellowed for the rest of the night, watching Mystic River (so overrated). Saturday went to the markets, did a bit of study, and then went to a non-DJ off party at a bar. The point was that all these people weren't real DJs but they gave DJing a go, anyway. I hate to sound smarmy but it showed - leave the non-DJing to the non-DJs. Sunday was tutoring, free-breadding, studying, and grasping at the fleeting tendrils of vacation. It's now Monday and back to school with a late night tutoring session to boot. No more days off until November. Yay.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Here's an interesting journal article (pdf) - the long and short of it is that it's a study done by some researchers in New Mexico where they charted dozens of strippers' earnings with respect to their menstrual cycle. It turns out that during estrous (the ovulatory phase - when the lady is most receptive to impregnation) the tips were much higher than during menstrual phase (and the strippers had to keep bottoms on). Estrous is the phase that any cat owner will be familiar with - when the cat wags its ass in the air, mewing and asking to get screwed. Apparently, and not fully previously appreciated, humans give out the same pheremones and other signals that make them more attractive - best evinced by the tips.
What was Tiny Tim crippled because of his kidneys? Did Beethoven go deaf because of Irritable Bowel Disease? Did FDR actually have Guillian-Barre, not polio? Who knew medihistorical research could be so fun? Me!
Medical word of the post
subluxation: a partial/incomplete dislocation of a joint/organ/thing. Doesn't it sound cool?

testing, testing

2008-08-20T16:53:00.003-06:00

So I was planning on starting this post like so many others with an apology for delay. But you know what? I'm not gunna - love means never having to say you're sorry.
The only reason I'm writing now, anyway, is because I have a damn canceled dental appointment (which I suppose is what you get for scheduling an appointment with a 4th year dental student at the university... he's probably hungover and my teeth will be uncleaned for another week) and so decided to build up on backlog for you folks.
August has been a fairly decent month, as far as months go, with various ups and downs. 2 weeks ago I went up with some friends to a beach in the north. One of the guys' brother has a sweet house that's perched on top of a hill with a great view and only 10 minute walk to the beach. Even though it's "winter" I still swam 4 times, including a midnight skinnydip. At night we had a big bonfire on the beach and did something that I think all people should do - build a ridiculously dangerous firework. What my friend did was buy $30 worth of sparklers and put them together such: one handful would be taped together; another handful would be taped together and the ass-end of that handful would stick into the mouth-end of the previous one; this was done until all the sparklers were used up and we had a giant meter-long sparkler. Then, this was placed in a tube as long as the sparklers. Tube was angled on the beach and one sparkler stuck out a bit farther than the rest. Light that one and run. It was very cool, I must say - who knew sparklers could actually be exciting? It looked like the afterburner of a jet engine: it was daylight for about a second there and you could hear all the oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere being sucked into it. The tube was PVC and didn't stand a chance - it was completely gone. I suggest everyone try this.
The next night I got to go to a friend's parents' house for dinner. For those who don't live with/visit adult houses very often, you'll understand why this was exciting for me - everything is stocked! You never go to an our-age house and see matching dishes or completely full pantries and fridges, with cookies and shit just there and begging to be snacked. The best part was time-honoured tradition of raiding the liquor cabinet. They had 42 Below Feijoa Vodka which was really tasty. Plus some good wine and Stella Artois.
On Monday night was the Med Revue. I mentioned this last year - it's a big night of skits and songs, organised by a lot of students from the school. There's videos making fun of professors or, even better, puns on medical terminology. It'd be moot to try to explain it so I won't, but mind you - it was good.
The rest of the week was normal. Sadly, more and more of my time is being taken up by this horrid elephant in the room known as the USMLE (and no, it's not pronounced "you smile"). The US medical licensing examination is a multi-step test designed to equilibrate medical students throughout the US and abroad, in typical standardised-test fashion. We'll say that it's known as the hardest test in the world EVAR, but I'm just making that up. See, I'm not against checking everyone who wants to practice medicine, especially those who come from private-expensive-easy-to-get-into schools, Caribbean schools, or UQ, but this exam asks a lot of stuff that is WAY too in-depth and mostly useless for actual medical practice. Some questions are just ridiculous, as well.

35>Two young boys are playing at a daycare center. One holds a ball on top
of some blocks that the other child has placed on the floor. The second
child helps steady the blocks, then the first child lets go of the ball
, knocking the blocks down to the floor. They both watch and then repeat
the process. These children are most likely
A. 10 months old
B. 16 months old
C. 18 months old
D. 24 months old
E. 48 months old

39> A 30-year-old veterinarian on a cattle ranch presents with a 1-to-2-month
history of malaise, chills, drenching malodorous sweats, fatigue, and
weakness. He has anorexia and has lost 15 pounds. He has intermittent
fevers that range up to 103 F (39.4 C). He complains of visual blurring.
A physical examination reveals mild lymphadenopathy, petechiae, and a
cardiac murmur consistent with aortic insufficiency. What is the most
likely etiologic agent?
A. Bacillus anthracis
B. Brucella abortus
C. Coccidioides immitis
D. Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae
E. Trichinella spiralis

18>A 5-year-old girl is brought by her parents to the emergency room
because she is complaining of stomach pain. Physical examination reveals
multiple bruises on the child's body in different stages of healing.
X-ray examination of the chest demonstrates two cracked ribs, and the
child says, "Mommy hit me." The parents deny any abuse of their
children. The physician's most appropriate response would be:
A. "I am going to call the police right now."
B. "I must report this situation to Child Protective Services right now."
C. "I need to hospitalize this child for further studies."
D. "I will bind her ribs tonight and you must promise me that you will not strike this child again."
E. "I will bind her ribs tonight and you need to bring her to the outpatient clinic in the morning."

I guess that the annoying thing is that USMLE and my university couldn't focus on more disparate things and still be known as "medicine". USMLE wants to know every bacteria, every symptom that that bacteria causes, what it looks like and what culture it grows on. It also wants the biochemical basis of every disease. UQ medicine wants clinical reasoning skills and lists of risk factors for all the major diseases, as well as some random stuff as well. UQ may be "easier" but it definitely is more logical in terms of learning what you actually should know and will use in the future. I guess the upshot of all of this is that, once I'm done with this test, I will mostly likely never have to memorize (highly) irrelevant stuff again - which is very exciting. Additionally, if I fail, then I guess I'm staying in Australia.
Last weekend was pretty good. On Friday night I got back together with my group of close discussion-friends from last year. We went out for some pizza (I think every pizza place in the world should sell pizza by the meter) and then back to my place for dessert. Saturday and Sunday I tutored a new student who's English is pretty pretty low (good) but can only meet weekend mornings (bad). Saturday night I went to a housewarming gathering (11 people does not a party make) where there was catered good Chinese food (good) but my friend's boyfriend ending up punching a different friend (good).
So what else is new? I've been watching a decent amount of the new season of Weeds and it has been pretty good, though not as good as the previous season, as well as some new Family Guys. I definitely recommend this site to all people who like watching streaming episodes of almost every TV show. I've also seen a couple movies loaned to me from a friend: My Own Private Idaho - good, a bit strange, but nice. Sexy Beast - meh. ShortBus - woah... nice but messed up, I suggest you go and see it and see what I mean.
Anyway, that's it for now. It's too cold inside my house for long typing, I'm afeared. Brisbane houses are built so be cooler than outside. This is good in summer but not so much in "winter."
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I feel like this is probably the best thing of my blog but has been lacking lately. It's definitely not because from know on, I only encounter things that I know...
Factoid!: Vitamin C deficiency, also known as scurvy, causes poor wound healing, swollen gums, bruising, and anaemia. Once the British Empire learned this, it issued limes to all their soldiers as a way to curb this deficiency, bringing about the term "limey" for British person.
So this week we've been studying organ donation and brain death and everything and it has been quite fascinating. The ethical side is interesting in its own right (not that I understand why someone wouldn't want to donate organs, but that's a whole other thing). If someone "dies" and their cardiopulmonary function ceases, it's pretty easy to assess: no heart beat for 1 minute, no breath for 1 minute, no reaction to something painful. However, brain death is a bit more tricky to diagnose because the person's "body" still goes on (with a lot of medical assistance) and so it's a bit more intricate to find out. There are 12 main nerves that are responsible for most of the sensation (regular and special) and motion of the face and they all have to be checked, this entails: painful pressure all over the face, checking pupils (they will be dilated with no reaction), rubbing a thin piece of cotton over the eye (most deep-coma patients will blink... no blinky = no thinky), testing gag reflex and cough reflex, and, the most interestingly, putting between 20-50ml of ice cold water into the ear (because this is, for some reason, supposed to give you nystagmus = eye shaking). Once a person is declared brain dead by 2 different specialists, then the body is very respectfully opened up and organs go to people who need them. Incidentally, heart & lungs need to be transplanted within 6 hours; liver and pancreas 12hrs; kidney 24hrs; eye, bone, heart valves can be frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored for a while.
Medical word of the post:
fecolith: (feco=shit, lith = stone) a hardened ball of feces that has been dehydrated and is now stuck somewhere in the colon. It commonly shows up on x-ray and is a typical cause of appendicitis.

What's the big i-día?

2008-08-02T20:50:00.005-06:00

Greetings Chumps and Chumpettes,
Let me tell you about my last day:
8:00AM, Saturday: I woke up a bit early because I was slated to help my friend Claire move some shit. She needed some burl and I brought it to the party. I ate a quick breakfast and headed over to her house where I spent the next two and a bit hours moving stuff from her place to her sis' place and another trailer-load to boot. Hard work but the beer is reward enough. And the good deed, I guess.
11:00AM I went to another friend's, Fiona, house for a treat. What I got was some tasty green coconut jelly cakes and a pork-sticky rice bun. The exchange was finalised by my dropping off of delicious, moist compost. Then we moved on the ever-popular markets to pick up on greens (and oranges, reds, yellows, and more greens).
12:30PM I ate my usual and amazing Saturday-arvo-poached-eggs-plus-nice-bread-plus-veggies and then headed over to Chris' place for a ride down south to the beach. Yes! I sucked myself into a beach ride and this is always relevant. I haven't been to the beach in a month and as the weather has been particularly lovely the last couple days, I thought a trip was necessary.
3:00PM We only just arrive but the sun is shining and the waves are waving and it's very nice, even for just an hour of jumping crashing cruising. We head back home
6:00PM I arrive back at home, giddy and nervous having just been convinced by Chris to do a night-shift at the Emergency Department at the hospital. I fixed up an amazing meal (fresh homemade pasta tossed w/ olive oil, chopped chili and tomato, roasted garlic, onion, and pumpkin with heaps of nice parmesan and a tiny bit of wine (for sleep)) and watch a bit of a movie and am in bed before 8PM
8:00PM I read a bit and try to relax and fall asleep. I was pretty nervous, to tell the truth, because this would be an interesting thing ahead of me indeed. I was guaranteed to do some invasive stuff that I heretofore haven't done and who knows what kind of Saturday-night trauma I would see? I finally passed off into sleep around 9.
10:43PM I wake up with a jolt, down a glass of soy milk, pack up my bag, get dressed and bounce out the door. I ride along feeling vaguely jetlagged and out of it, very confused at the amount of people out there even though I understand it's a Saturday night. I get to Chris' where I have some strong green tea, he teaches me how to iron my shirt and then we go to the hospital
11:30PM We get to the Emergency Department, dressed in clinical white coats with stethoscopes around our necks, plus dress clothes underneath. We looked awesome. We schmooze with the interns/residents/consultants there, who are all impressed that we are there for a night shift and proceed to give us work to do. It was so cool and going through it timelineally would be outrageous. I got to:

Do a neurological exam on a guy with suspected encephalitis and then present him to the intern
Stick in 3 canulas (these are the access ports sticking out of veins where fluids/meds go in, etc). I'd never done this before and only screwed up once. It was hella cool though.
Watch a resuscitation team take care of a woman who flew through the windshield of a 4WD (she was fine)
Do and present a cardiovascular exam on a guy in a lot of pain, but who was notoriously a difficult patient and whom was given an ABG (painful blood test that was kind of needed) because he was a wank
Get coffees for all the doctors
Watch an interncostal catheter get put in
Watched a demented 84 yr old woman get her bowels manually disimpacted (triple gloves, apron, mask, mucho air freshener)
Did a bunch of more exams
Helped with a patient who was rushed by the ambulance. He presented with a fatal heart-rhythm but was worked back up and was semi-okay. The best part was that he looked kinda fooked up, like an alcoholic, and so I, in passing, suggested maybe giving him thiamine (a B vitamin that alcoholics are notoriously deficient in and thus have problems with memory and walking, etc). The HEAD of the department overhead me saying it and mentioned to the team, no fewer than 3 times, "Michael suggested thiamine, which I think is a good idea". Fuck! Awesome.

And a lot more. It was soooo great, I must say. I was just pumped the whole time and it didn't matter that I'd had a full day and only a 2hr nap and was on my feet all the time and getting ordered around. I felt more medical than I've ever felt before and I loved it. I felt like an actual person for the first time in my life, I think, and that I'm actually involved in something that I'm happy to do. For now. Since I avoid caffeine at all costs, all I needed was a double hot chocolate (from the fancy drs' lounge) to keep me going. Although I'm there there was much adrenaline involved as well.
8:30AM (Sunday) We finally left the hospital and I rode home high and giddy and cheering because it was such an awesome experience. I got home and took half a sleeping pill (a man's gotta watch his cycle, yo) and had some cereal and then went to bed
12:2oPM My housemate was listening loudly to some random techno that totally sounds like hospital noises to my sleeping-ass and so I wake up thinking that someone was going into VT. Oh well, I'll sleep well tonight.

In terms of up-to-datetry. Last night was quite the culmination to a very full week. We'd had a bunch of procedural workshops (oxygenation, nasogastric feeding, chest draining, catheters, life support) and other random classes. We also had, one of the educational highlights of the year, an autopsy. About 4000 autopsies are done every year in Queensland. They are requested by the coroner's office in cases of homicide/suicide/sudden death/all unexpected causes of death/anything else unknown. We went in and watched one done on Wednesday. There was a pathologist who was speaking and telling us what was going on as well as an assistant who would have made Dexter cringe a bit. It was very confronting because there, on the table, was a 53 yr old guy who looked totally alive and like he'd get up any second. But he wouldn't. And the worst part is the beginning, because while the doctor is explaining autopsies and everything, the assistant starts readying the both, top first, starting by peel the top of the face down. Plus, since the body was so rigid (this guy had been alive <24hrs ago), his arms would move and stuff with the force. Creepy, wonderful stuff.

So yeah, the acaedemic stuff is going pretty full-on at the moment. There's been an unfortunate ebb in my English tutoring. As most Koreans come towards the end of their summer, they also leave towards the end (visas etc) and so all my students are leaving and no luck at the moment finding other ones. It's okay, I will probably have to wait a month (max) but shall get some soon.
Um, in our yard we have a crazy scrub turkey doing all the raking for us. The awesome little guys look like velociraptors and spend all day raking shit up into a pile form. The bigger the pile of leaves, the better chance some chick turkey will come along and offer herself up. The eggs then get buried down at the bottom of the pile where decomposition of the leaves keeps everything warm. The other day I watched the guy courting the girl while I was having my morning breakfast and was struck by how similar these guys are to humans: the male rooster builds a big nice house to get a female over; while she's over there, he's biting at her shoulders while she's digging a bit and flinging leaves in his face. Ah, young love. Here he is working on his pile (which he's been doing for a month now):

Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I'm too tired to think about this one right now - will post later.

And that's why I'm never paying for bread again

2008-07-17T02:37:00.005-06:00

Greetings, earthlings. It's been a while since I last rapped at you. Stuff has been a bit busy and a bit chilly over here, yet still quite good.
The last couple weeks has been the psychiatry block. Very interesting stuff. I feel like medicine has this funny thing about it whereby every week we learn about something that I hope I nor anyone I know ever has. Fun, isn't it though? Schizophrenia is one of those things that you don't really think about except in terms of crazy homeless people but it's so much more complicated than that and really horrible. Ugh. At least I'm mostly in the clear for that one... look out Parkinson's!
Speaking of interesting stuff in medicine, yesterday we had our training for the Well Woman Check. This is a check-up designed for women who are well (not just a clever name!) to get vital screening stuff taken care of once a year. Skin check, breast check, abdomen, Pap smear, and a bimanual examination. I was a bit nervous going in but I think everyone is. The student I was partnered with had quite a shaky grip on her speculum, so at least I wasn't the only one. So this program is run by a bunch of women who are trained extensively in teaching and modeling this stuff. Yes, professional vaginas they be, exposing their tops-to-toes to medical students far and wide. I wonder how much they get paid? Anyway the actual doing of the thing was not that weird once we got into it. Eroticism is the furthest thing from your mind, though it didn't hurt that mine was on the larger side and had had several children, if you get my droop - er, drift. The grossest part of the thing, besides a lot of it, was looking in between the toes for skin problems. You'd think that since this woman did this for a living, she'd-a cleaned her feet!
Outside of vaginas, my life has been pretty sociable and good. I've been to a couple of parties and had people over for dinner (made an awesome eggplant lasagna) and such. Last Sunday I had a mind-altering epiphanic sort of experience. Let me tell you folks about the wonderful world of dumpster-diving.
Now, before you get all grossed out hear me out. My friend Chris is a bit of a connoisseur in this area and decided to take me under his wing. We met Sunday afternoon behind a really nice fancy bakery. The kind of place with amazing pastries for $4 and organic olive bread for $8. The kind of place that closes early in the day. The kind of place that throws away perfectly good bread. So we went to their bins where there was other trash but mostly bread. Unfortunately, these philistines (rant - it's so ridiculous that bakeries and other places throw their food away instead of giving it to charity or giving it out free at the end of the day. The former is justified by health and safety acts; the latter by economics - if you can get the bread for free why shop at the place?) also dump the coffee grounds on top of the trash. Luckily, there's an outer crust (ha!) of bread that protects the inner bread from filth. We checked quite well and got about 8 or 9 beautiful loaves of bread plus some pastries (spinach & feta, pumpkin & recotta, steak pies, etc) that were in a separate bag.
We went back to his house and ate (and ate and ate) and then digested and studied for a while. At 9 we went to a strip mall near his house and checked out a grocery store's bin. This is where experience paid out since he knew exactly how to go about diving. Wearing rubber boots and crappy pants he climbed on top of the rubbish and pulled away stuff, handing me goodies to collect in our bags. There was so much produce thrown away that was perfectly good. We got like 15 bunches of asparagus, a couple bags of potatoes and apples, bananas, broccoli, etc. This stuff was a bit gross but once washed looks like anything normal. As we were leaving the mall, we decided to check out one more bin - this one belonged to a different bakery (a chain this time and not as good as the other). As we lifted the lid, a beaticious light shone down upon us as cherubs sung their celestial song. There was So Much Fucking Bread. All of it was in clean garbage bags with only bread accompanying it and most of them were in separate bags. There was more stuff than one could ever eat or take home. We collected a bunch of scones and muffins and stuff. I was able to fulfill a long-held fantasy from the bottom of my gluttonous cockles: grabbing anything that looks good, taking a capricious bite, throwing it (cuz it's not wasteful!!) and moving on... bite off the top of that chocolate muffin, then the top of a blueberry muffin, then get the cream from an eclaire followed by a bite into a brownie. Holy hell it was amazing. I couldn't fall asleep that night until 12:30 - so struck by this awesome way of getting free food I was high on life. And sugar.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
As I aforementioned, schizophrenia is a crazy disease. Literally. The way it comes about is so insidious and nasty, as well. Often it will be a bright, social boy who does well early in high school and then later on gets a bit more withdrawn and doesn't perform as well in his studies. Parents/teachers assume it's just being a teenager or perhaps mild depression but it is actually a prodrome (syndrome before the disease) that eventually results in the psychosis that we associate with the disease. Once you have 1 psychotic attack there's a 10% chance you return to normal. The rest have either reduced function or chronic disease. These can be somewhat managed with drugs, but brain drugs have their own level of craziness:
Chlorpromazine - this was the first antipsychotic invented (in the 60s) and works kind of well in a number of things. For some reason it cures intractable hiccups and in 30% of people with cholera, it reduces the symptoms. However, it has unattractive side effects like akathisia (fidgeting) and tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movement of head and neck)
Risperidone and some of the newer ones don't have those effects but what they do is cause a buildup of prolactin (pro meaning for and lactin meaning milk) and what this does is cause man boobs and man lactating. You can avoid this if you take an antiprolactin drug like Cabergoline. This has can be used as a party drug as well because of the recently documented knowledge that prolactin is responsible for the refractory period (time where nothing happens) after male orgasm. By blocking this drug, men can have multiple orgasms! Woot! This drug is also taken by steroid poppers to reduce the man-boobs that steroids give.
Clomipramine, speaking of drugs with sexual side effects, is a fairly regular antidepressant. Except that in a select few patients taking the drug, yawning gives them an orgasm! These people, most likely, spend their freetime watching 2 and a half men.
Medical Word of the Post:
hemiballism: involuntary jerking or writhing movements of one side of the body

I admit laziness

2008-06-25T18:54:00.003-06:00

It is is a problem of mine, I grant merrily, that sometimes I just don't feel like updating and it ends up in a downward spiral of shame and not writing. Mainly, not writing.
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.

Deconstructing Henlee

2008-05-21T17:54:00.003-06:00

Hello trusty people, I am very sorry it's taken me so long to come up with something. I have been busy, true, and lazy, true, and behind the program.
I guess the real exciting thing going on is that I'm finally working a bit. Woo. My life used to be like this:But now, I'm happy to say, your friend is looking at this kind of situation:
And how has something like this happened? Well, I've always done (little) and thought (lots) that I could just continue tutoring English to Koreans for a part-time job. I've got experience and skillz that make me a worthwhile tutor. The problem has been, however, in the lack of students in my life. Last year I tutored one (1) girl for a couple months and then she left. I'd tried advertising last year and more this year and just couldn't get anyone interested. My girlfriend had even advertised on websites for Koreans living in Brisbane (there are heaps!). Well one day, I decided to check out this so called website that she was using and saw there were definitely people looking for tutors. As it unraveled that she had been using a shite website and I had stumbled upon gold, we quickly posted an advertisement and the requests for tutoring poured in. I've had to deny more students than I could have dreamed of! (6). What I enjoyed almost as much as accepting offers and getting monies was reading the emails of people at various levels of English-bility.

i`ve been iooking for tutor on sunbrisbane for weeks and i found your e-mail.
but i don`t know..how much my english improved..especially i`m weak writing..
i left roughly a month for exam.
if it`s possible, can u send e-mail to me.
i wonder how much is an hour?
thanks for reading....

Not too bad - this is the English level I like to teach... has some skill but definitely can improve. It translates to an easy gig for mineself.

hi

we're korean couple.

we're looking for a tutor.

if you're available now, we wanna study with you 5 times a week seperated each other.

but first, i have a question.

if we will study with you, how much do we have to pay for you per hour?

we're student so we can't afford to pay you lots of money.

we wanna pay you less than $15 per hour if it's possible.

if you're interested in our proposal, please contact us.

(our proposal is negotiable a little bit)

i hope to hear from you soon.

These guys may have had the English it takes... but that's about it. First of all, I wish I had the time to teach 5 times a week separately - But I don't. Also, teaching couples together is awesome because it's slightly less work for more money. Also, it's funny how they mention paying "less than $15 per hour" because that's approximately minimum wage in this country. I charge 25, baby.

Hello~ ^-^

My name is aram Lee n I’m Korean.

I saw your advertisement on sun Brisbane.

I’m looking for tutor.

I wanna study about speaking n writting.

I finished upper-inter level in general English course before.

I want to be active talker who can speak very well about society n culture n politics.

Actually I have a casual job. So I can’t study at same time every week.

I can decide our time table once a week. Of course it’ll be decide with your agreement.

I wanna study 2~3 times a week. N I’m living south Brisbane. I wanna study near city or my place.

If you think I’m alright to be your student, please contact me with ur detail(pay n about you n…..)

I actually took on this student since she seemed to be after something a bit more interesting than the usual essay-help that I have to do. Chatting about intellectual stuff and learning good vocabulary and junk is good. Here's a forceful email:

HELLO THIS IS PHILIP FROM KOREA.
I SAW UR POST WHICH IS LOOKING FOR A STUDENT ON THE INTERNET.
I'M INTERESTED IN THAT.
I WAS JUST GONNA SAY THAT WHERE WE HAVE A CLASS AND HOW MUCH IT COSTS PER AN HOUR?
YOUR EMAIL REPLY WOULD BE MUCH APPRICIATED..

Nope!

I`m looking for English tutor.
we are couple.
we want leaning english to you.
if you can teach us, call me plz

I know that that email was terrible, but I actually took these guys on for the aforementioned reasons of mo' money less work that comes with couples. They are nicer in real life.

Hi
Acutally, i need tutor because i wanna go to an university.
So i have to learn IELTS
Are you help me about i will pass IELTS
first of all i want that i can study English at over 7pm Mon to Thur
However, at the weekend, i can at 6pm
do you do that?
please help me
maybe The pay is $20 a week
Is it ok?

IELTS is a big exam that people have to take. It's a main focus for foreigners wanting to study at an English-speaking university. I didn't take on this student but I thought the email was cute.

Hello Michael

My name is Inki

I got information you are looking for English tutoring from internet site (actually my wife said to me about it)

I need a English tutor (especially writing) for my son(year 8)

Here are some details about my son

His name is Jason

Korean

Highschool student, year 8

He has been studing here Australia a little over one year
We live in a townhouse(Pedstow view) in Eight Mile Plains

4 zone but very near to Bus HighWay, it takes about 25 minutes from city

and bus stop is infront of the town house( route 150)

I included this one not because the English is necessarily funny but because the story kind of is. This guy's wife called my girlfriend immediately after I posed the advertisement (there were as many calls as emails) and, according to Hyeshin, was a bit rude. After we were informed that she lives far out of the city (zone 4 = bus/train zone in terms of distance and therefore fee) we told her that I was sorry but couldn't teach her son. So early the next morning I get this email from the husband, trying to be more polite and trying to sell me about how easy it is to get to their house. I'm sorry, Inki, but I am spoiled by my beautiful bicycle and how it takes me less than 10 minutes to get to the city where everyone else wants a class.

So I guess that's it about the work-front. Everything else has been more or less the same. I went out with friends to a terrible Thai restaurant over a week ago and I'm still steaming about that. But I did get a free dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant last weekend (a friend has a credit card from her company and gets restaurant meals tax-deducted or something that I don't understand but don't argue with). Last night was the Ultimate Frisbee semi-finals. We lost by 1 point. Sad. But it wasn't my fault (normally it is) so I didn't care that much. I have a midyear exam in 2 weeks. Still cooking a lot. Etc.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Fistula. Just the word is gross, isn't it? What it is defined as is a communicating tract between two organs, essentially. It can be congenital or as a result of some disease process that you get. People with inflammatory bowel disease can get these, especially. You can get pretty much any kind of connection which, in a body that is pretty tightly regulated, can result in some bad stuff. You can get a gastrocolic fistula (gastro = stomach, colic = colon) which results in some pretty nasty breath. Can I interest you in a rectovesical fistula (recto = rectum, vesical = bladder)? You essentially shit and fart (fecouria and pnuemouria, respectively) out of your urethra. For the ladies, how 'bout a rectovulva fistula (vulva = vulva)? You can use your imagination for the kind of discharge that you get. Besides for being really gross, they can totally kill you, which some might say is worse than pooping out of your pee-hole.
Medical Word of the Post:
tenesmus = the feeling of incomplete evacuation after defecation.

Here Comes the Regular

2008-05-02T02:49:00.004-06:00

Well well well. I see you have brought a seat. That's good.
Last weekend was good. Not just pretty good, but one of those weekends that makes you happy god invented weekends and the luxury of living in a country where your primary concern isn't finding clean water and food for the day. I went to the beach.
Friday was ANZAC day, which means that a bunch of people died. However, it also means that I didn't have to go to school. 4 friends and I piled into a car at 4am and headed out to climb the beautifully titled Mt. Beerwah. It was a tough little climb, I'll say. Like rock-climbing on a slope, about 75degrees, we'll say. That meant that if you were fast and skilled you could run up, but slow and trepidatious meant climbing. It was fairly challenging but I was still better than the girls in the group, so it was just the right level of work for me.
We got to the top and had a picnic. Ben, the guy leading the walk and the driver, had brought a large thermos of hot tea, as well as 2 baguettes, several tomatoes, and three kinds of cheese! It was possibly the best sandwich of my life, aided by the sunrise, blue sky, good company, and satisfying climb. We came down. The rock uppity bit was much worse coming down, actually, since you have to semi-slide and be on all fours (crab). We hightailed it to the beach afterwards and had a great swim. Lunch. Then went and drove around a bit, had some beer at a pub on top of a beautiful hill looking out over the bush country (not Bush country) and the ocean in the distance and then went to Ben's mate's place. This guy has a cool expansive house on top of a hill right in the bush, with lots of fruits and vegetables growing around and a great view from his dining room table. More beers and relaxation. Finally came home around 7 and then I went straight to a different friend's house for dinner, came home around 10 completely exhausted and slept, beautifully.
Saturday was markets, as usual, and then a bit of study. At night there was a birthday dinner.
Sunday I woke up at 9 with a text message saying, "I'm going to the beach in 15 minutes, wanna come?". Aw, hell yes. See, while Brisbane is technically on the east coast of Australia, it's not on the beach. It's about 30km inland from the ocean, but the area all around is industrialised, as ports tend to be, and not beachy. The nearest beach is about an hour drive in either direction, so it's not like I get to go very often. So I jumped, broke my fast, packed a bathing suit and hopped outside and leaped into the car. Went back to the beach and swam for a long while, met up with some people, had some lunch and beers and hung out, then back to the beach. We even brought text books so we could study on the sand. How cute, I know. On the way back, we listened to a pre-recorded lecture in the car and discussed the relevant points. (this is to show that life here isn't all beachy keen, but we do study)
The week flew by. Tuesday I had a study-session until 11:30pm, capping off a very full day. Wednesday I had a meeting with a Korean girl who found my flyer offering English-tutoring services and she's going to hire me. Yay - now I have 2hrs/week of work! That should keep me out of the poor house. Afterwards I had a study-session, then class, and then some ultimate frisbee. Another packed day. But as they say, busy days make merry mays, or something. Thursday was another full day, capped off with dinner with Ben, 2 bottles of wine, and studying lung cancer.
So that brings us to today. Wow, the week flies, don't it? Earlier today we had a practical session where we learned how to cannulate (that's when you put the tube in a vein so you have access to it while in the hospital for putting in fluids, antibiotics, blood, etc). Unfortunately it was on a dummy arm (1500$ an arm) but we were told we can go and practice on real people if we want, so I will. Then we had an ethics symposium on Self-Induced Disease. I find this area terribly interesting (no sarcasm). A person chooses to smoke and does so for many years. They have lung cancer. Who pays for the surgery (20,000$) or the treatment (10,000$) or the transplant (100,000$)? This is much more relevant here in Aus where they have a good health care system where the government supports, obviously, but the key issue is still important. Logic may dictate that a person has personal responsibility and therefore pay out-of-pocket for all health care problems arising from their decisions. However, it is often impossible to separate the cause-and-effect course of disease from the ever-strong role that genetics and environment plays. Sure, more than 90% of all lung cancers are in smokers, but there are plenty of smokers who don't get it. Emphysema is almost solely tobacco-related and induced, but there is a population which a certain genetic deficiency that makes them much more predisposed to developing emphysema. Except they usually smoke to.
So there's obviously no answer.
In the symposium I posited the following, "one can argue that pregnancy is a medical condition that is self-induced, and that pregnancy and child-birth etc. is an expensive ordeal; someone who has no kids might be upset that her taxes pay for someone else to have 8 kids; however, if we tried to establish that people should pay for their deliveries or set a limit or something, there would be a public uproar. What's the big difference, ethically speaking?" I got some chuckles and, more importantly, the lecturer said it was a good point. There is an interesting additional facet to this whole debate in regards to popularity and common opinion. Lung cancer is Evil and Babies are Good. Sport injuries have the same dynamics: a person who brakes their leg on the football field is playing the game and it's a terrible shame; a person who detaches their retina bungee jumping is a damn idiot who deserved it. What's the difference?
I guess the problem (beauty?) with ethics is that there is no clear-cut solution and all you can do is think about it. I know I've been constantly flipping and flopping ideas on both sides of the fence . I think this is as relevant and more interesting in terms of obesity. These days, a person who goes up to a smoker and tells them they're killing themselves is a little outlandish, but it's okay. If I went up to a large person waiting at an elevator and told them that they should take the stairs (which I so often want to do), I would be labeled as a prejudiced person and a bastard at that. So what do we do?
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
So, cigarette smoking has been the soup de jour of the last couple weeks, as it were. There are several different kinds of lung cancer: squamous cell, small cell, large cell, adenocarcinoma, etc. Anyway, up until now squamous and small cell have been the most common but now adenocarcinoma has come up on the rise. What's funny is that this is a more peripheral (ie edge of lungs as opposed to center like the other cancers) cancer and that it is arising much more strikingly in women. The reason? Those low-tar ciggies that are touted as being healthier deliver less of a buzz, obviously, and so people inhale deeper and so the smoke gets farther downstream in the lungs and produces a cancer at the edges. Ha! You can't avoid it, suckas.
In terms of smoking cessation and its effect on the progress of the cancer, the relationship is so linear it seems designed by up above: good research shows that people who quit smoking at a certain point in their lives are at the same risk level as others who quit smoking at the same time and that the risk difference (between quitters and continue-ers) narrows the later in life one quits; additionally, people who smoke less instead of quitting have a proportional decrease in risk: smoke half as much as normal and your risk halves, but guess what? Your risk is still there and much higher than someone not smoking. Lose again!
To discuss exactly how smoking causes all these problems is a task much to great and arduous for a simple blogger like myself, so I will allow you to do research as you wish.

No, not an animal...

2008-04-19T05:38:00.003-06:00

I was walking in the markets with a friend last Saturday. I was enjoying it as per normal, meaning liking it and hating everyone who even minutely made it worse for me. A lot of people bring their dogs and it's pretty annoying: it's crowded and narrow-walkways and a dog on a leash makes the traffic build up like crazy. We were walking behind a woman with her dog and I whispered to my friend, "ugh, I hate it when people bring their dogs to the market!"
*sometimes, in a crowded and loud area, there's a point where somehow all other sounds die. at this moment, a whisper seems to travel like an arrow straight into the auricle of another person, heard as clear as a bell*
She turns around, face pre-set to livid. The following exchange takes place:
Crazy woman, "you don't think I should bring my dog here?!!?!? they're allowed here!!
Me, "I know they are, but I think it's a little annoying"
CW, "why can't I bring my dog here?? dogs aren't allowed anywhere!"
M, "actually, they are..."
CW, "you know what? you're an animalist!"
My friend, "okay, guys, things were said, let's just cool down"
M, "okay, whatever"
CW, "you know who shouldn't be allowed in the markets?! immigrants! immigrants like you!"
M, "oh really? your family is originally from Australia right? all your ancestors originally came for Australia?"
CW, "you know what? you're an ignoramus!!"
M, "okay, whatever. bye"
as we're walking away, my friend says, "good job, michael. you had to pick a fight with the only person at this market who's a huge dickhead."
The woman was left behind literally shaking in anger, with her boyfriend holding her and trying to calm her down.
Some notes that only make me happier:
-My friend is a professional mediator so she was good about stepping up. The woman was with a boyfriend (or husband or something) and he didn't say peep!
-I remained calm the whole time. I didn't shout or anything to give her the satisfaction
-My response about her not being originally from Aus. was pretty awesome - I'm quite proud of it. It's a bit of a touchy subject with Australians and it's one of those things that you usually think of 5 minutes later when you replay the conversation in your head.
Otherwise, things have been pretty good. It's autumn here and getting a bit chilly, but quite beautiful. The mornings are so blue and clear and nice. School is full on. Let me talk a bit about school these days, as I haven't mentioned anything this new year. 2nd year is much more intense: it's much more focused on pathology but we're still learning new basic things everyday. In addition, we're supposed to know everything we learned last year and it's just a lot of shit. The other big difference is clinical experience. Last year our clinical coaching (once a week thing where you learn how to do physical exams) was mainly on each other. This year we go around and poke and prod on real patients with real problems and actually get to see stuff. In addition, we're expected to go around on our own once a week and talk to a patient and get a full history and do a bit of physical examination as well. I do like it, I must declare. Talking to a person under that kind of context is quite a unique experience: someone you've never seen before and most likely will never see will tell you about their pains, their depression, their bowel habits, their marriage, their addictions, the problems they have. All while they're sitting in bed, bored and sick and in hospital attire, and you're in a chair dressed up. It's a bit enjoyable, even when the person has hard stuff to talk about, and makes me think that maybe I am going into the right field. Woo!
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Well, I kind of suspected, but it's good to know. A lot of people are really into the whole "antioxidants, d00d, they totally heal your body!" fad that has spread like wildfire, supplying people with the easy false hope they crave and depleting their cash (according to the BBC, the vitamin-supplement market is around $2.5 billion). Well, a Cochrane review article came out saying that there's no proof that anti-oxidants are helpful for sick or healthy people. They can even increase mortality! Ha! Now, this isn't some news article or even a journal article but a meta-analysis review which, from a statistical perspective, is as close to dogma as it gets. The review looked at 67 randomized trials with a total of over 220,000 patients to get to this conclusion. Cochrane.org is an awesome website that I go to to search for scienticious stuff and I recommend dabbling around in it yourselves: it's free and they usually include a "plain language summary" in their reviews. So what? just eat well, people, that's it! Sheesh!

Scared Straight

2008-04-08T17:01:00.002-06:00

I woke up at 4:11 this morning feeling not right. As I walked to the bathroom (because that's where you go when things don't feel right) I realized that it was quiet... a little too quiet. I recently moved to a house near the train line and it is quite loud at night and especially in the mornings. As a way to counter that, my girlfriend bought me some earplugs - little guys I'm only just getting used to. I've taken to cramming them in pretty well since they inevitably course their way out overnight, rolling to cerumen-less pastures no doubt. As I sleepily padded to the bathroom, I made to take out my plugs and found that they weren't there. Or, at least, they weren't poking out or on the bottom of my floor, where I normally find them. As sleep quickly drifted off me I realized that they were ALL UP IN MY SHIT. I could barely finger the polypropylethelene border preventing me from being woken up by loud noises and I started to panic. I did what any normal person would do and went to the kitchen. I got some chopsticks and a toothpick. I then went back to the bathroom to try to extrude the foreign bodies. My second attempt with the toothpick came up with a bit of bloody stain - Ohohs! I forced myself to sit down, breath a bit, and have some cold water. After a bit of more-awake and more-worried digging, I managed to slice off a piece of the bud, at least letting me be sure that I wasn't crazy and I did have these things inside me. I finally got one out, breathed some relief, and noticed the hard rain coming down. I managed to get the other one out a couple minutes later and went back to bed. As I was lying there, I was wondering where it all went wrong. Warning, it may get a little nerdy here. Normally, there's a bit of air left in between the ear drum and the ear bud. As the air is being smashed in there behind the plug, it is under high pressure. The middle ear is connected to your mouth via the pharyngotympano tube and it is this tube that allows you to "equalize" or "pop" your ears on an aeroplane. So over the course of the night, I would have equalized several times, slightly, without knowing it. So what? Well it was raining quite hard and I seemed to remember from The How, Why and Huh? Book of Weather that rain = low pressure systems. Pressure likes to move from high to low and I wonder if the difference across my ear drum (really, the tympanic membrane... pretty thin) was pretty great, drawing all the pressure from behind my ear drum inside, trying to escape, created a vacuum that squashed and trapped the ear bud inside. This is what I was thinking about at 4:30 am, trying to go back to sleep.
So what?

So I realized it was time to start blogging again. I've shirked responsibility - neglected my duties out of fear or desire to not catch up. And much like the plagiarizers curse, it all catches up with you. I've done a lot since I last reported - I cannot lie. I been to several cities, countries, airports, restaurants and hung out with a lot of people. But the difference between me and a regular ol' plagiarizer is that I don't have academic culpability. I don't need to play catch up with you, my loyal blogging republic. Huzah! Maybe I'll just put up a couple of piccies to quell your hunger for things past for the time being. That's the coward's way out. But also the efficient man's.We should be back to normal soon enough. Cheers!
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Very brief: apparently smoking as little as 1 cigarette every 5 days increases risk for cardiovascular disease and whatnot. That's the amount that a person gets in 2nd hand smoke if they live with someone who smokes 10 cigs a day.

Wrap up

2007-11-24T07:49:00.000-06:00

Like most things in, my time in Nepal had to end. Right now I´m too tired from flying to pontificate as eloquently as I normally do, so I will just highlight.
- We went to a Bollywood film. We were prepared for something insanely ridiculous and were disappointed, since the movie we saw was so good. Om Shanti Om: a tale of love, revenge, reincarnation, and movies. It was very well done, the songs were great, the leads were hot, the plot was original and good. Even though it was in Hindi with no subtitles, we are able to follow it quite well. There was an interval in the middle so we duck into the restaurant next door and grab some momos for 50 cents and then hop back in. Also was great was how every so often the video would dim and then go black and then all the people in the audience would hoot and whistle and it would come back.
- Our 2nd to last day we didn´t have to go to the hospital, so we woke up early and rented a row boat to go out on the lake that stakes its claim in Pokhara. The lake was just beautiful: reflections of mountains, mist clearing off... so niceOn the other side of the lake, we climbed up and got great views of the Himalayan range in the background. Also we met some local kids who invited us to a picnic. Sadly, we couldn´t attend as we had plans with the group for some late-afternoon decadence. Since it was our last day, we decided to treat ourselves to a buffet/day pass at a posh resort. We rented bicycles and rode there, which was also a great experience. I was a little mad I´d never goten around to renting a bicycle and cruising around, since it´s so fun. 10$ bought us all we could eat of decent food, as well as fool access to pool and, more importantly, sauna. We spent the whole day there. That last night we were blessed with a full moon that rose at sunset and was as pink as everything else.
-I had to return to Kathmandu to catch my flights to Buenos Aires, so I took a bus, forgoing the more expensive plane I had taken to Pokhara initially. The bus ride was abour 200-250 km and took almost 8 hours. Pretty amazing, huh? The roads are not, how you say, good over there. Arrived in Kathmandu in the afternoon and did some leg work until I found a room for under 3$. I spent the next day gleefully enjoying being on my own, since I could do and, more important, eat whatever I want. Street momos? Check check and check. I stopped in a little fruit stall and had a freshly squeezed mug of pomegranite and sweet lemon juice, which was out of this world. I also walked quite a bit.
-My last evening I met up with a girl from my program who was doing her hospital work in Kathmandu and at the same time living in an orphanage. I visited the place and it was pretty amazing. The kids were great and cute but the conditions of the place were... well, what you´d expect at a 3rd world orphanage. Perhaps better. We helped them do homework, hung out, had dinner, and then, the best part: activity time. All the kids (77) gather in a room and sit down and do a couple minutes of chanting and then 10 minutes of silent meditation. It was soooooo cute, all these kids sitting cross legged, eyes closed, just thinking to themselves. Since they´re little, some of them started drifting off to sleep and then catching themselves and jarring back up. Also, since it was winter and resipiratory illness season, there was a consistent sound of sniffling about. After meditation, was public speaking. About 7 or 8 kids (pre-arranged) had to get up and tell a joke, a story, or sing a song. This is to maintain confidence and outgoingness and whatnot to enhance social interactions.

Putting the pal in Manipal

2007-11-22T09:17:00.000-06:00

Other than trekking and eating, the other thing I do here in Nepal is hang around Manipal hospital: the surprisingly empty and beautiful hospital gracing the hills of Pokhara. It's an interesting thing, actually, since it's Indian owned and most of the doctors and medical students there are Indian. It's a nice hospital and is half empty all the time since most Nepalis assume it's too expensive because it's so nice. Also they don't like Indians poking around inside them.
As part of our course, after our first year exams we have to do a 4-week elective in a hospital of our choice. The point, ostensibly, is to get some firsthand clinical experience, as well as get to learn about a different hospital system/healthcare system and possibly be exposed to problems you wouldn't find in Australia. Ideally students go to a 3rd world country since they can do stuff (assist in surgery, take blood, etc) that they wouldn't be able to do back home. Unfortunately, Manipal is a teaching hospital and thus we haven't really had a chance to do much of that.
Our first week was spent in Community Health. Several days in a free clinic where mothers and their babies come. We also got to see a leprosy hospital and a tuberculosis clinic - both cool since wouldn't see too much of that back home. Nepal is one of the 10 countries left in the world where leprosy still has an incidence of greater than 1/10,000 people. It was interesting to see some patients and learn about this disease that's one of the oldest recorded in human history.
The rest of the time has been spent in surgery. We're given free reign of the surgery ward, where there's usually a couple going on, and as such we can scrub up and wander around. Seen:
-Circumcision of a 27 year old: looked sooo painful. Also, they cauterize the wounds and so we were exposed to the smell of burning penis.
-Kidney stone removal: rarely are stones removed through surgery, but this one was quite big. The hole the doctors made in this poor woman was enormous - you could have fit a burrito in it.
-Cleaning of a wound following an accident: the kid was in a car crash and had some filth in his hand that he was reluctant to get cleaned. After some persuading, he finally agreed to surgery; poking and prodding was done and finally a piece of bamboo longer than an inch and as thick as a pinky was removed.
-Cataract removal: freaky. The 12 year old boy was awake too and once he started whimpering, I had to leave.
-Dislocated hip replacement: we walked in on the tail-end of this one. The position was the bed elevated so that the thigh was at shoulder height, with a huge hole cut at the side. Along the side of the bed, a mixture of blood, saline, and iodine was dripping down. This may not seem important to know until you learn that in Nepal, they wear sandals with no socks in the operating room and so had blood dripping on their toes.
-Below-the-knee amputation of the right leg: this one was significant. It was a 21 year old tall and well built guy (unusual in Nepal) who was hit by a bus while riding on the back of a motorcycle. His foot was dead but he really did not want to get it amputated. He went to Kathmandu for a 2nd opinion and was told the same thing, so he came back to get it removed. As he was sitting in the bed, getting a lumbar block (anesthesia below the waist), the anesthetist was teaching some interns/medical students how to do it and they were making some jokes and giggling as people do and I was struck by how sad the situation was: this guy was about to go to sleep and wake up missing his leg, and these people were laughing about something in a language he didn't even know. The surgery itself was quite interesting. The foot was black and dead and there was a nasty wound on the leg. When they made the first incision there was actual bubbling from the bacteria gleefully colonizing within. Let me tell you, gangrenous necrotic flesh smells a hell of a lot worse than burnt penis. When they got to the tibia, they busted out a hacksaw and went to town cutting away. Then they got to the fibula and since there were some tender areas around, they used a length of semi-barbed wire with handles at each end to saw through. At some point during the arduous sawing process, the surgeon managed to launch a piece of bloody flesh the size of a dime and hit himself right smack-dab in the middle of the forehead. And it stuck! He spent the next hour surgery with this piece of gastrocnemius stuck to his face, unknowing. It was so centered and red and perfect it almost looked like a tika. They removed the leg and foot, finally, and unceremoniously chucked it in a bucket.
This morning, during ward rounds, we were there when they roused the patient, sat him up, asked some questions, checked his chart, made some prescriptions and moved on. I was still paying attention to him, though, when he pulled back his blanket and glanced down at the space where his foot and leg should have been.
The look on his face.

It told so much and I couldn't begin to describe it. The best I could do is grief-full resignation. It was so sad I wanted to cry.
But that's life, isn't it? And this is what I'm getting myself into for the rest of it. C'est la...

Annapurna

2007-11-21T07:13:00.000-06:00

/I've just come back from a most amazing experience: a 10-day Himalayan trek. Terrain: rough, formidable, conquerable. Views: snow-capped, crystal-clear, terrace-agricultured. Food: Nepali, plentiful, cheap, delicious.
My 2 friends from UQ, Ben and Fiona, 1 other girl working in the hospital and another that she met took off the 10 days, hired a guide (15$/day) and set off last last Friday to Nayapur, the gateway to the Mt. Annapurna Base Camp trek.
Day 1: Nayapur to Gandruk
This was our first day and it consisted of mainly up-hill climbs and virginal glee and awe at the surroundings. The only marring event was the pathway blockaded by Maoists. Normally, I'm for the pinkos, but anyone who forces me to donate money irks me. After much yelling and annoyance, we each paid 400 rupees (8$) to these men-in-red, got our receipt so we wouldn't be assaulted again, and were on our way. We got our first glimpse of terrace agriculture: the continually-beautiful system of farms that they have embedded in the hillsides over here, like giant steps, filled with millet, wheat, corn, and other stuff. We also got introduced to the highly used pack-mule and even more used pack-human (aka Porter) carrying large and heavy bundles up the steep stairs, yet passing us with their mighty strength. We also saw a kid with a nasty leg wound and cleaned him up and bandaged him. We spent the night in a nice tea house that afforded an amazing morning vista and stuffed ourselves silly, thus setting the tone for the rest of the trip. The tea-houses/lodges are amazing. Built in remote and high-up places, they have government-mandated menus and prices and provide affordable and clean beds and delicious meals as far as we were going to be hiking. It's amazing, actually, how cheap things were considering the captured market and how much they could have charged. A bed would be between 1 and 2$ a night and a good meal (with water to drink) wouldn't be more then 3 or 4$ anywhere along the trek.
Day 2: Gandruk - Chomrong
We woke up and breakfasted outside, just gazing jaw-a-drop at the views of Machhapuchre, Annapurna South, and Hyongtully mountains. The hike started with a decent downhill and a killer uphill. We hiked for several hours, with good rests in between, and got to our teahouse. Had a shower, lots of food, some cards and called it a night. By day 2 or 3, we would predictably be in bed by 8pm.
Day 3: Chomrong - Dovan
This was a very nice day. Woke up and started off the day climbing down 2000 stairs, crossing a river, then climbing back up for great views of the area. The next 2 or 3 hours was "Nepali flat" (rolling ups and downs) through cool jungles. Saw some white monkeys and a bunch of birds and enjoyed the beautiful cool moss-covered foliage. Stopped at the outskirts/ends of the forest, as we'd reached 2500m elevation and the terrain was starting to change. This also marked the change to less-nice accommodation (eg no hot showers) and cold nights.
Day 4: Dovan - Machhapuchre Base Camp
This was a big day as we were due to climb 1200 vertical meters over the course of the day. Over 2500-3000m is when altitude sickness kicks in, so the agenda was walking half the speed at which you're comfortable. Sounds weird at first but once it starts getting more and more difficult to breathe, it makes sense. The terrain changed from jungle to rugged and mountainous, but still quite beautiful. The last leg (1 1/2hrs) was, in my humble opinion, the hardest part of the whole journey. The terrain itself was easy but the altitude and steady incline made it increasingly difficult to breath and then it started to snow. I made it to the lodge, finally, and rejuvenated myself with a hot bowl of garlic soup. Supposedly it's good for acute altitude sickness but I didn't really care since it was hot and garlicky. We were about 1hr away from the next and last leg but decided to stay the night so we could do the leg in the morning and watch the sunrise. I thought this was dumb but boy was I wrong...
Day 5: MBC - Annapurna Base Camp - MBC - Dovan
We woke up at 5am and set off along the dark track. The stars were simply amazing: it was a crystal-clear night, nary a cloud in sight, we were at 3700m elevation and there was zero light pollution. After 10 or 15 minutes of walking by headlamp, we realized that we could make better use of the light of the stars. It was simply magical: starlight glinting off frozen streams and the snow from the tremendous mountains surrounding us as we walked in a valley on a gentle incline. It gradually got a little lighter and as we neared the Base Camp, pink started caressing the tops of looming Goliaths until gold saturated the air and everything around. And it was coooooold.

After sunrise, we had a well-earned breakfast and then trekked back down, which was considerably easier. We walked back through the jungle and ended up back at a lodge we'd stayed at several days prior and the previously cold weather now felt quite warm in comparison.
Day 6: Dovan - Chomrong
Backtracking back to Chomrong was a short and mostly sweet day. We stopped by a river to have a swim and do some laundry, Nepali style. The water was bloody cold. Like it made Lake Superior feel like a warm bathtub - even I, the polar hirsute devil that I am, was only able to submerge myself for a second and then jump right out. The air was warm and sunny, though, so we lazed about for a bit before climbing back up the 2000 stairs that we'd previously climbed. Once we got the lodge, it was business as usual: hot chocolate & rum, cards, and food. Food of choice on the hikes was usually vegetable fried noodles, breakfast food (porridge, eggs, etc) and for me Dal Baht for dinner every night. Dal Baht is a huge plate consisting of a generous portion of rice, steamed vegetables, vegetable curry, a papadam, and lentil soup. The best part about it is that you can get free refills on anything you want! When one is trekking up and down hills, cold when not moving and sweating when, carrying a decent-sized backpack upon shoulders the thing you want more is food that doesn't run out. I had it I think 7 dinners in a row (the first 3 nights I didn't know about the refills).
Day 7: Chomrong - Jhinu - Chomrong - Somewhere - Chomrong - Tadapani
This was a doozy of a day. Ben and I woke up at 6 to head to Jhinu, where we'd heard there was some natural hot-springs pools. We couldn't pass it up so we decided to go early and catch up with the girls later. We walked down a very steep hill and got to the base of the valley where the springs were. What they'd done was set up 3 pools with constant flow of hot water from the spring pools. No sulfur smell either. It was right next to a mountain river, too, so we could jump in the river and into hot pool back and forth. We spent an amazing hour relaxing before 8am rolled around and we decided to head back. It was a big climb back to the lodge, made no easier by our relaxed and loose muscles. We had some breakfast and then headed off. We walked about 45 minutes before we reached a fork in the path ; we were informed that going right would lead us to our destination. The right lead up a steep hill and seemed to be a bit backtracky but we took it anyway. An hour of going up and heading in what was obviously the wrong direction - yet we still persisted, constantly awaiting the sudden turn - we ended up almost where we started. Fuck. It was noon by that time, we'd done a crapload of walking and hadn't even gotten where we were supposed to be. We walked back and found a sneaky climb over a fence that was apparently the path we were supposed to take. Finally, on the right route, we headed to the destination. Along the way were some farms that were very fecund. We noticed that actually a lot of them were growing marijuana and, since fall is harvesting time, the air was sweet with the smell. We were offered some to buy but being the upstanding people that we are, we refused (8$ for a ball of hash the size of a large marble). We got to a cool big bridge and then climbed a ridiculous hill, only to get to a plateau and then climb another ridiculous hill through a forest. It was hard work anyway but given our previous days-worth of walking, we were completely shattered by the time we got to the lodge. It was sad, too, since the walk through that forest was quite beautiful and I even got to get close to frollicking monkeys, but I was too wrecked to really enjoy it. Luckily, the lodge had a hot shower and amazing views.
Sunset...
And starry skies aplenty.
Day 8: Tadapani - Gorepani
Woke up at 6 and watched the sun rise and subsequently greet the day.

Thanks to Allah or Ra or someone, I wasn't sore when I woke up. Breakfast and then hiking. We first went up through the next tier of forest (we were climbing up again) that had a surprising amount of snow and ice along the path. It was very slippery at times and I was glad we were going up and not down, for once. The next level was awesome deciduous forest, reminiscent of the Rockies or something: beautifully sweet pine smell coursing through the air, sun peppered leaves on the ground, mountain peaks in the near horizon: it was one of the nicer walks we'd done. All of a sudden it ended at a clearing on top of a hill and the 360 degree landscape was out of this world. Himalayan mountain ranges on one side, rolling hills and farmland on the other, forest in between. We just stopped and stared for 15 or 20 minutes and attempted to soak it in.The sky was crystal blue and we could see, what seemed like, forever. It was just a short downhill amble to the lodge. It was one of the nicer lodges we'd seen: huge with an expansive dining area with couches and a fire in the middle and even a library (where you drop off a book you just read and pick up a book someone else previously left behind): I was in heaven with my book and a mug of rum hot chocolate. We watched the sunset over some locals playing a high-altitude game of volleyball.Day 9: Gorepani - Poon Hill - Gorepani - Hille
We woke up at 5 o'clock to hike up to Poon Hill (yes, it is quite the name - don't worry, many jokes were made) to watch the sunrise. This time we didn't even bother with headlamps because we knew how illuminating the stars were and how brilliant the rods in our eyes are. There were a surprising amount of people climbing up with us but we passed them and made our way to the top. It's actually dumb for me to attempt to describe what it was like watching the sunrise glimpse over the hills and enshroud the Himalayas in yellow. It did. The video could try to do it justice but it simply cannot.
We descended from the hill. That puts it mildly; actually, I ran down. I was full of energy and it was beautiful and I was happy I wasn't carrying my backpack (we left it at the lodge) so I ran down. Breakfast and then on the way. We hiked for a while and ended up descending 3000-some stairs. Everyone's knees were ruined and so we stopped at a lodge. A little dog paid me a visit.
It was only 1:30, however, and the lunch was pretty ordinary and so we decided we'd be extreme and soldier on for another hour or so until we got to a lovely spot along a river. Ben and I went in for a bit of a refresh and then we settled in the open dining area. We'd reached low enough elevation so it wasn't that cold. We ate some fantastic food and, since it was our last night, decided to celebrate a bit by sampling some fermented drink. Retired to sleep.
Day 10: Hille - Nayapur
We woke up early and started the day by a dip in the river. It wasn't as cold as the other river higher up but this one was still quite cold and hard to stay in for too long. After breakfast we set off for a very easy and nice final walk, only 2 hours or so. Along the way, we saw an awesome waterfall with a perfect pool at the bottom and Ben and I could not resist one final swim before leaving. We got to Nayapur and the guide organized seats on a bus for us to get back to Pokhara. Here, when buses are full people sit on top of the bus: there's a grate and a very short fence that you can hang your legs through. I could not resist the opportunity and thus we ended the trek on a great point: sitting on top of a shaky bus with no shocks and old brakes, going through winding mountain roads that were too narrow, with awesome Himalayan backdrop along the way. I had headphones in, listening to J5, wind in my hair and sun on my back, feeling great.

We got back to Pokhara feeling quite proud indeed.
It was difficult but, honestly, not too difficult. The pace we did was such that I was never really tired nor sore. I must say I am very happy with my body, my genes, and my gear since I didn't get any blisters or sore knees or achy muscles or any other aches. My only physical side effect was constant hunger and that I looked like a ripped mountain-man when we returned. All in all, a most-excellent trip.

Nepalistan

2007-11-04T04:18:00.000-06:00

Ah, Nepal. A place among places. Whatever the fuck that means.
I always felt like I had done some 3rd world experience: thailand, vietnam, philippines... all seem like San Francisco compared with Nepal. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This place is crazy. Traffic is a mess of horns and potholes and cows, with some people actually getting from point A to point B, though it takes a long time.
I arrived in Kathmandu on Tuesday and met my friend Fiona. She, along with Ben, are the ones I'm traveling with / working in the hospital with. We spent the next day or two walking around and eating a lot. I have been to a Nepali restaurant perhaps twice in my life and never really gave much thought to its cuisine but man is it tasty here. There's all the good stuff of north Indian food, coupled with delicious dal and momos and other shit. Also, it's dirt cheap.
We went on a long walk to the monkey temple: really, it's a temple with a lot of monkey and a decent view of the city. Other things to do around here are eating, as I've mentioned, and shopping. There are also lots of temples, of course. There's a great collection of knock-off hiking gear at prices that make me wish I had an extra bag to check in on my way home. Lots of roof-top restaurants and bars, too, which make relaxing that much easier.
On Thursday we flew to Pokhara, a largish city and, more important, gateway to Mt. Annapurna and the rest of the Himalayas. Rest assured, the view from the airplane was absolutely amazing. We went straight to the hospital when we arrived and proceeded to wait for 4 hours for someone to show up and tell us what to do. Thank krisha that I had the foresight to bring travel Scrabble (more important than extra clothes, if you ask me). We found a hotel right on a beautiful lake to stay for the next 4 weeks, at 5$/person/night.
Friday was our first day in the hospital. We are starting off on the community health rotation and thus piled into a big bus and went to some very poor district and got to the clinic: a shack, 12 ft by 12 ft, filled with crying babies and their moms. Once a month, the interns from the hospital go to a different area and provide free vaccinations and basic checkups as well as basic medicines. It was several hours of upper respiratory infections, diarrhoea, measles, and scabies. We were of completely no help since, obviously, we know nothing, especially Nepali. Very interesting, nevertheless.
The next day started off with a morning swim in the beautiful lake. We went to the hospital and on to the clinic, which was more of the same thing, followed by a picnic with the interns. All of them are Indian, doing essentially what I'm doing: going to medical school in an inferior country because it's easier to get into and cheaper. Ouch, it hurts, don't it? Regardless, they are all very nice to us and fun to be with. We rented 2 paddle boats to go on the lake with several bags of take-out Indian and Nepali food, as well as alcohol. We passed several hours on the middle of the lake/shore, eating and chating and drinking and having a good time. One thing that was really distraughting for us (Fiona, myself, and 2 British girls who were also working in the hospital on the same kind of elective thing) was the littering. Here you had educated smart young people, out on the lake - why the lake? because it's beautiful and nice, etc - and littering like the world was ending tomorrow. Finish a bottle of vodka? throw it in the lake! Leave the bag with plastic spoons and plates on the beach, why not? As I saw an empty bag of Masala Lays floating away, shuddering at the knowledge that the next time I go swimming I will run into it, I couldn't help but feel sad.
In the meantime, the next couple days will be more or less the same - hospital in the morning/afternoon, followed by eating and some drinking and relaxing. Next week, we're due for a big hike - hopefully that comes true!

30$ in 24 hours

2007-11-04T02:48:00.000-06:00

That's Australian dollars.

I am in Bangkok with an exact day layover and with only 30$ AUD in my pocket, I make a conversion (924 Baht) and a little prayer.

Let's explain how I got here, though, since it is pretty ridiculous. I had originally booked my crazy ticket around the world through Amber, my STA travel agent. The ticket to Bangkok was from Sydney. She asked me how/when I'd like to get to Sydney and since I didn't know my post-exam travel plans, I told her not to worry about it - that I'd get it. So I did and since it's me, I got the cheapest flight 80$ AUD (with carbon offset) leaving Brisbane at 8:30AM on Sunday morning from the international terminal. I had to wake up at 5am in order to get there on time to deal with the ridiculous rules about checking in (if not checked in 90 minutes before flight-> lose seat; since it's Australia, no online check-in). I get to Sydney, spend 14$ to store my luggage for the day (big backpack and box of medical supplies) and take a train (14$ round trip) to the city. Get there, walk around Farmer's market, chinatown, have some lunch, walk for a long time, then come back at 7pm for my 9:55pm flight. I check-in to my flight and much to my surprise note that there's a layover in Brisbane. What the fuck, Amber? I emailed her (free internet in airport) and asked her if she hated me, then went in for some more waiting around. Took off (delayed), landed in Brisbane, then delayed some more. We finally left Brisbane at midnight. I had paid around 130$ to see the Sydney Opera House. For the third time.

BNE->SYD->BNE->Kuala Lampur (free internet: Amber told me she didn't hate me and that it was a "hidden ticket")->BKK for my 24hr layover.

I've been to Bangkok before, so I knew this could be done. I first leave my bags at the airport and then get a bus to the touristy/backpacker's area (150Baht). When I get there, I immediately tuck in to some famous delicious street pad thai (25Baht) and a freshly squeezed mandarin juice (10Baht). I walk around for about 45 minutes, searching for the cheapest room I could find. After 45 minutes, and 11 guest houses, I've found a room 40 Baht (1$) cheaper than the first one, at 150Baht. Except they require a 500B deposit. Ouch. That left me with 94 Baht to have several more meals and drinks for the day. I immediately get a 5B bottle of water. Walk around for a while and then get to a park and chill. The park was on the river, with nice temple inside and view of a cool bridge. I get peckish so walk to the local street cart and get a basil chili vegetable fried rice (20B) and freshly squeezed guava juice (15B). I sit back down in the park and strike up conversation with a friendly (non-prositute) woman and we chat for several hours. I then go and get 1 more Pad Thai (20B) and a tallie of Beer Chang (34B). Perfect: no money left.

The next morning I get my deposit back, than god, and splurge on a huge amazing smooth (40B) and a plate of some sweet rice cake thingy. I dunno, but it was purple. Then take a shuttle to the airport (120B) and pay for my luggage (200B) and then have 120B left to kill. Have a spicy bowl of soup (100B - damn tax!), a bottle of soy milk (13B) and then I donate the 7B remaining to the charity thing.

Too easy.

Leaving on several jet planes

2007-10-27T00:16:00.000-06:00

How can I express my happiness...
With Jacaranda leaves~!
Well here I am, my last evening in Brisbane. This year has gone by pretty damn quickly, let me tell you.
I finished my exams and there's no emoticon to express my pure crystal glee at being done with studying. Ended up clocking in 27 days in a row in the same room, averaging at least 5 hrs a day of studying. Easily I studied more in the last 3 weeks than the last 23 years up until now. What a mess. I think the tests went well but thankfully I won't find out for a while. For those of you curious what our tests are like, it's like this: on Sunday, we had a practical test at the hospital, with 5 stations: 1 ethics/communication, 2 history-taking, 1 life support, and 1 physical examination. I was pumped!
-Ethis station: woman is worried about her misbehavin' daughter who's been coming to see me and wants me to tell her what's going on. Boom, confidence! Can't say nothin, bittie.
-History: woman with worsening breath on exertion, smoker. Bam, asthma, get out of here. Next guy with weakness in his arm? Stroke, next!
-Life support: Oh Resucsi-annie, I own you
-Physical exam: the fucking elbow? We never did this one in our clinical coaching sessions! I made up some stuff, picked out key anatomy, and skeezed out of there, gratefully seeing everyone else was as pissed with the choice.
The written tests were two days, consisting of multiple choice, short answer, and problem (story) things, plus 1 ethics essay.
Since the tests have finished, I've been packing and partyin. Yesterday a bunch of us hung out by the river and had some beers and food and played soccer and chilled and then went out for dinner. Day before hung out and watched a storm (in Brisbane?!) and listened to music. Yesterday it also stormed for a bit, yet was funny. Beautiful. Tried to capture it but didn't quite work...
As of now, I'm moved out, sitting and sweating in Ben's apartment. I leave tomorrow morning on a typically-michael horrible stream of flights:
Sun 8:25 am flight to Sydney... 11 hr lay over
Sun 9:30 pm flight to Bangkok - 23.5 hr lay over
Tues 10 am flight to Kathmandu - 2 day lay over until I fly to Pokhara for my hospital elective.
I don't remember if I'd mentioned this before on here, so I'll repeat it: I'm spending 4 weeks in a hospital in Nepal on an elective program where we shadow doctors and get basic actual skills with real people. And since Nepal is a blessedly poor country, we might actually get to do stuff. The most annoying thing about those flights is not that I'm on them, it's that I'm bringing a decent-sized box of medical supplies to donate to the hospital. And each leg of the flight was booked separately and must be checked into separately and thus I must carry that damn box with me all the time. Oh well, these are the things I do for the good of mankind.
I'll let you know when I get there,
love,
michael

Textbookzlolz!

2007-10-22T03:22:00.000-06:00

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time studying... curling up with textbooks of all sorts, hoping to be inspired or at least educated. Most of the time my mind is distracted and I think of other things, like the covers of these damn books. A good new medical textbook will range anywhere from 80-200$ and so you expect quality both in and out. Never judge a book by its cover, of course, but you do anyway and have to wonder what people are thinking when they make these things. By the way, I haven't purchased any of these books, they are all in my classroom.

This is my favorite physiology book: lots of good detail and suitable organization. Physiology in general has a wide array of interesting stuff to cover, so why the hell did they choose this image to be their cover? It may have something to do with DNA, it could be an ECG... who knows?Medical biochemistry - a subject so boring they must inspire you with super-cool images and ultra-high-tech graphics reminiscent of a poor-man's Matrix. Also featuring: an inexplicably playful font for the title.

Look at this self-righteous tome! Shaped and styled after the bible, The Merck Manual tries to herald its presence with a Revelationsesque wrath. Yeah, we get it Merck, you own all the drugs in the world. "Centennial Edition" ... ooooh!
This is one of my more favorite covers. It's a surprisingly bright and cheery color for a textbook, especially for one that's so no-nonsense on the inside. I don't know why they have to claim that it's the 20th edition twice on the cover, especially one with a lame star behind it, but good on them for putting a bit of jazz in physiology.
An indispensable book in the office but a sad sight nonetheless. Featuring a color scheme chosen out of a manual entitled "Color Schemes Not To Use", with a lamely stylized stethoscope and possibly a chest.

With a picture out of an anti-abortion ad campaign, Essentials of HUMAN EMBRYOLOGY (emphasis mine) proudly declares its allegiance to mother nature... or at least Space Odyssey 2001.
Is it an anatomy textbook? Is it a coloring book? Is it a Halloween costume in a box? Look inside and find out! I think I get what they were doing... a "problem-solving" approach to looking at anatomy, so present it linearly and all divided. I get it. Still not attractive.
This is another of my favorite ugly covers. The ugly maroon-bordered, weird-blued cover features a insightless schematic of how the brain, the lungs, a cell, a pear, another thing, and half a liver all connect: linearly! You don't even need to read the book, just follow the lines and you're as good as gold.
I included this more as a joke than anything else, because come on... look at it! It doesn't even want to be taken seriously. I've never even opened it, I just included it since it was in our classroom and looks like a Highlight's magazine.
I don't know how to feel about this one. Part of me likes the minimalist, border-less approach. The thing in the middle, possibly a cell, both has a cool Lego-ness to it and an extremely lame reductionism to it. I think I'll add this cover in the good pile. I also like the sequence of authors, since it sounds like a stern teacher addressing her class, "Mims - play fair! Roitt, wake Lin. Williams! (I'm keeping an eye on you)"
I guess I should apologize for how this picture turned out - you're really missing out on some totally awesome special effects. I wouldn't know how to begin imaging DNA transcription and translation (which I assume is going on here), but I would be sure use more symmetrical shapes and colors. Seriously, it looks like Mr. Bucket threw up.
I think Nussbaum said to McInnes, "I want to use, like, an art to depict medical genetics." Willard chimed in with, "how about abstract modernism?" "No!" McInnes yelled, "save that for those damn OBGYNs... let's do something much lamer... how about Indigenous art?" "Genius!" everyone agreed, and patted themselves on the back full-heartedly. Oh, I get it... DNA looks like Man. Wow.
You know the publishers of this one were mad they couldn't include sound effects with this one. You can just imagine the "tscheeew" and other laser sounds emanating from this cover - reminiscent of an ad campaign for a graphic design technical college.
This is probably my other favorite cover. Interesting and nice colors. Cool layout. Don't like histology... don't know what the crap on the left side is, but I'm appeased.
Judging this book by the cover, you would be very surprised. The outside may make it look like the sequel to Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, but inside it's filled with some of the most horrific pictures I've come across this year. I don't think the publisher was cool with that, so instead used this romantic cartoon instead. I'm no art critic, but I know what I hate - and I hate this cover. The faux-marble borders? Why would they want that? The font for 'Grants' is way too flashy. The centered image is okay, I guess, until you realize that that's the most useful image in the book.
You'd think that a high-quality, well-established medical dictionary wouldn't have that horrendously tacky "Special Value Package" sticker on it. You'd be wrong. Other than that, it's a nice simple, clean cover with good colors.
Look at her spirit, her style, her joie de vivre - surely she represents everything that physiology is about. Also, this isn't the only physiology book that features dancers on the cover. The thing that bugs me about this cover is that they have to exclaim twice that this is the international edition. The fact that this version is not for sale in the US (because US can get away with charging more for textbooks) is really irrelevant to physiology and please get off the cover.
Have you ever seen Pharmacology.... on weed?
Here's an unfortunate. 'Robbins' Pathology', as it's affectionately known, is one of the best books we have and an invaluable resource. I guess they must try to be magnanimous by picking such an ugly cover. Obviously borrowing the same shamed color scheme as Clinical Examination, this one further indemnifies itself with that random, undescript clip-art that they chucked in the back. Why must a leader in textbooks have a cover that looked like it was designed in the Windows 3.1 version of MSPaint, I do not know. From the garish CDrom icon to that weird 7 in '7th edition', everything about this book screams "Don't buy me!". Yet we continue to do so. I guess it is what's inside that counts.
I laugh every time I see this one. Which, considering how it's not a great book, is infrequent. The publishers were obviously oblivious as to what to put on the cover of an OBGYN book and so must have stopped in the nearest OBGYN office and took a painting off the wall, because that is exactly what this toned-down, not-subtle, modernistic piece is.

Delayed gratification

2007-10-20T05:07:00.000-06:00

Hey trusty network of readers/reader. Sorry I've been so horrible with updating lately. To be honest, there's been a dearth of excitement in my life, and it couldn't have been reflected better than by not typing anything.
Our PBL room, the discussion room where I always study since 18 of us (though I'm one of 5 who actually use it, definitely the most) have 24-hr swipe-card access to a box with many text books, tables, a computer, a white board, and unopenable windows, has been my life. I have been there every day for the last 25 days. EVERY DAY. I've finally finished my way through the tome that is our practice exam booklet. At $46.25 (AUD), spanning 8 years and at least a kilo or two and several inches, this epic volume has been my pursuit the last 3 weeks. I know - it's horribly depressing.
Other than studying, I've been eating, reading, internetting, and a spat of biking and socializing.
Tomorrow (that's a Sunday) we have a multi-station exam at the hospital, where we will have to physical/history taking/ethics and other random stuff. Then Tues and Weds we have the finals. And then I'll be happy.

It's Tuesday night, getting ready to go to sleep before the big one tomorrow.. woot woot! Just wanted to post a pic or two that I took recently... really just because I can. I guess I was inspired to take photos because I'm leaving soon... or because I wanted to brush up on my photography skillz to get ready for my big trip. Jacaranda's are in bloom these days - it's a sweet tree with an amazing purpleness to it that's everywhere these days in Brissy.
This is the view I get every time I cycle back and forth to school... you can see why I ride and why I live in Brisbane, eh?This is what the Jacaranda looks likeThis is what it looks like if I use the nifty 'color accent' function... I think it's pretty coolI walk past this sign every day to get to my building and always laugh and think about taking a picture. Well I finally did! How awesome is my university that it has a Centre of Excellence for Integrative Legume Research? I mean, obviously if you're going to have a centre for integrative legume research, it's going to be excellent.This is right after sunset on the river... jacarandas are at the opposite bankI came across this picture in a physiology book. It made me laugh, though it is irrelevant to this post.And this is where I lock my bike up every day. No, the irony is never lost on me.

In good company

2007-09-10T04:01:00.000-06:00

I hope this early September finds you functioning well indeed. I am well.
I spent last weekend in Melbourne with Hyeshin. She moved down there with her sister and sister's kids. It was a nice, chill weekend. Eating a lot of food, without having to cook, and doing an inordinate amount of driving. They bought a car and are..um... uncomfortable drivers, and so I volunteered to chauffeur for shopping and do some teaching. My first time driving on the left side of the road but no accidents occurred.
The week passed quite well, due to a good hump in the middle. Not that kind, you dirty-minded soul, I'm talking about Wednesday. A couple of us went to a bar that was having trivia night. We got well into the sauce but lasted the night. Unfortunately, our cocky-med-school egos were crushed as we got 8th place out of 10! All's well, since luckily we scored some free beer and deathly slushies at the end. Afterwards, we were feeling rambunctious and so drove over (I put my bike in the trunk of a guy's car... don't worry, we had a DD) to Ben's house - he actively didn't want to go out because he was studying. We spent many hours there, idling away the late night with dares (someone ate a whole Habanero!), drinks, and other jejune activity.
The rest of the week, in atonement for my Wednesday indulgence, I was a good boy. Thursday and Friday I was at school until at least 6pm (from 8am) studying. The weekend was very low key. Dinner at Ben's house with scrabble, as per usual, markets, and some study. By low key, I mean boring.
I will use this forum, at the moment, to do something quite unusual not bitch. I will, in fact, do whatever the opposite of "bitch" is about a company - two companies, in fact.
1st) My Arcteryx backpack's buckle recently snapped. This beautiful pack has been with me through thick and thin the last 4 some years and I'm not letting go! I went to their website, filled out a generic form for part-replacement (they didn't ask for receipt or date of purchase or anything) with my address in Australia. I didn't hear from them until 2 weeks later I got a package from them, from Vancouver on airmail-shipping, containing 2 replacements! No fee, no confirmation that I even own one of their backpacks!
2) I received for my birthday last year a sweet backpack-bike pannier combination bag from Arkel. The straps on the side started wearing thin and eventually broke. I emailed Arkel and set up communication. We wrote back and forth for a while, established that getting it fixed here would be cheaper than shipping it back to their HQ (Toronto). They found a company that specializes in bag repair, reimbursed me my shipping to the company and today I received the bag, fixed, with no bill!
I have to say it nearly brings tears to mine eyes seeing such quality customer service - all previous experience was with airline companies and Verizon, so I guess anything is better. Also, both from canada and specialize in 'gear'..hmm.
Smarmy Environmental Diatribez
There's a treasured anecdote in our family - one that was overheard one doctor saying to another at a medical conference. This particular doctor lived in Texas and was lamenting that he has such a nice fireplace in his house that he doesn't get to use often since it's so warm in Texas. So he mentioned to the other doctor that sometimes he turns on the air conditioner in his house, so he and his wife can sit in front of the fireplace.
!
My family loves and loathes this story, since we take it as a symbol for American at its worst. Air conditioners are an atrociously wasteful device that we have lived without for quite a while. Marketed in the post WW-II American Heyday as a status symbol, it has become seen as a necessity.
It is a very impulsive little device, indeed. I have often witnessed people walk into our personal discussion room, for instance, warm from their ascent up the stairs. They instantly turn on the AC because they are hot -that second- and then 10 minutes later they are cold. The human body is remarkable at dealing with temperature changes (it can be fine between 55-100 F, naked in the sunlight, one Physiology text book mentions) and the temperature nerve fibers stop firing (i.e. "I'm hot!" or "I'm cold") after a couple minutes of consistent temperature. I think if everyone waited just 10 or 15 minutes before turning on heat or cold, they would save a lot of energy and headache.
Another beef I [my family] have with AC in how it depicts Americana is that it is a tool of isolationism. You are necessarily boxed in, separated from other people, by having your AC on. Windows rolled up in the car, sealed tight in the house - it furthers the distance that is already too prevalent in society.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Our tutor is a neurology-PhD student and... really weird... so we get to learn lots of interesting stuff from her. We got onto the topic of addiction, one Monday morning. The way addiction works, as I understand it, is thus: a certain X enters your body. Due to the physiological/neurological affects (more the latter with narcotics), a map of memory neurons are laid in place throughout your nervous system, from lower parts to higher order sections. These neurons remember the sensation and so fire off impulses in order to get the sensation repeated (craving). With every use of X, the pathways between the neurons get better, as well more memories get laid in - thus increasing the cravings. Now, to get a bit deeper, the way these neurons lay down these memories is through the release of specific neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are little chemicals (like adrenaline, for instance) that help transmit a signal. For addiction, the amino acid glutamate (the same thing that brings the deliciousness in MSG, it is important for memory and excitation) is released in addition to dopamine (pleasure transmitter). This is, like more nerve conduction, is strongly dependent on Calcium. So they have a drug called MK-801 that can inhibit the influx of calcium, thereby preventing release of glutamate. So I can take some MK-801, inject some heroin, feel the amazing high but not have any addiction, craving, or sensory memories of taking it (I will still remember taking it, just not the specific pleasure). This allows people to give heroin as a pain-reliever (it's an excellent one) without worrying about addiction. Naturally, my crazy mind went on a different train of thought and came up with this: you could give this stuff to someone before doing something really bad to them, like torture, and they would have any sensory memories of the torture. This would negate the whole point of punishment but could possibly amplify the horror if done effectively. Anyway, I thought that was cool.

Not bored

2007-08-28T04:46:00.000-06:00

Greetings. It's been another ~week since I last wrote - it seems these weekly posts are sort of meshing with my life for whatever reason.
I guess the theme for this post, if posts do in fact have themes, is board games. Though thought of as the the fodder for Rockwellian portraits of Family, they are quite splendid. Specifically scrabble. I have been in a Scrabble-fix ever since facebook added the Scrabulous application. The ability to play simultaneous, auto-dictionarying, no-time-limit games with friends all over the world is a treat that will no doubt cause me to flunk out of school. Over the last 2 weeks, at any given point in time I will have at least 7 active games. There have been triumphs, there have been wrecks. Like in one game I got two 7-letter words and at the end, laid down all but one letter for the exact score of 400 - my first time ever. However, the guy finished and so I got my letter subtracted and won with a lousy 399. The online form isn't the only that has been taking my time, as I have been interacting in Real Life with people too. Friday night was dinner at Ben's with his housemates, drinking cheap wine, and playing scrabble and cards into the wee hours of the night. For some, this may sound like an abysmal, Machiavellian way to spend a weekend night but for me it's heaven. I hate clubs, I don't like bars, I barely like people. What better way, I ask?
The other game I played recently was Pictionary. Some of us in my discussion group had dinner together and with a bit of wine to open up the creative juices, settled in to some lively pictionary. I can't remember the last time I played but it was really fun. Especially when afterwards we settled into medical pictionary, with gems such as these (recreated, of course):Other than those gaming feats, the past week has been alright, flying by fast to be sure. Wednesday my housemate had a dinner party and was kind enough to include the house. She cooked some awesome shit and I had my fill of company and food. The rest of the week was alright. The weekend, besides for Friday night, was very unspecial. Saturday was typically typical: markets, eggs, study, movie (the excellent Dog Day Afternoon). Sunday I studied a bit and then went to the gym where they were offering their semi-monthly free trial days. I did some weights, some steps, and some steam-rooms. The dinner and a movie (the less excellent Pacino film, Serpico).
Sunday marked the end of a rainy week. This being a blessing, of course, since we've had a drought here for a while and are forced to take 4 minute showers (who takes longer than that, I don't know). The dams that provide the whole Brisbane-metro area have depleted to like 20% and they expect us to not have sustainable water within 1 year. You know what that is? That's a great segway to
Smarmy Environmental Diatribez
People waste a lot of water. A lot. 1/3 of the world's population doesn't have access even to drinkable water, yet the wealthy few take it for granted.
Toilets - jesus, what a waste. When you flush your sterile urine down the toilet, you waste about 1 gallon of clean water. Here, they have double-flush toilets, so you can chose a half flash for a pee. Better. Yellow = mellow is the best policy. Seriously, urine is completely sterile and if you close the lid, there's no offensive odor to worry about. A patented Michael trick: take a pee when you're brushing your teeth: this a) ensures that you don't leave the tap on while you're brushing b) makes it so you brush your teeth for longer than just staring at your stupid reflection in the mirror c) builds up a nice froth of clean minty goodness that you can spit into the toilet and neutralize any smell! What a win-win if I've ever heard one.
Waste yes, why not - this mentality really shits me to tears sometimes: there is no X shortage where I am, therefore I can use as much as I want. Waste = waste, no matter how you rationalize it. You don't need to take a slow shower if you live in the northern part of the US, but that doesn't mean you have to take a long shower. Turn off the tap while soaping up, for instance, and save 2.5 gallons/minute of fresh clean water (that you can drink instead of that bottled shit... don't get me started on bottled water, I'll save that for a different post)
Beef - it's only what's for dinner because of marketing! God bless advertisers for creating a market for daily-meat consumption, unnecessary diamonds, and everything else. 1 pound of beef uses 12,000 gallons of water to bring to your plate - this includes feeding, cleaning the feces and entrails from the floor of the abattoir and all the water needed to transport the food halfway across the country. There's a statistic out there about 1 gallon of soy milk vs 1 gallon of regular milk with respect to how much less water goes in to (not to mention land area, pollution from slaughter equipment/cow's anuses)
This could go on for ever but, like most content on the internet, is effectively pointless and, like most posters on the internet, I'm tired and on a rant.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
While we're on the topic of milk, bones are an interesting little specimen. The way they develop is nutso and we still aren't sure quite how they do it. The whole bone-organism is an ever shifting structure: bones are a source of calcium and phosphate that our body requires, and so it's stored and removed all the freakin' time. In fact, your whole skeleton is completely rebuilt every 7 years. For babies, it's closer to every year. By walking, merely existing, you cause microfractures in the bone that needs to be excavated and rebuilt - at any given point around 10% or so of your skeleton, right now, is being broken down (reabsorbed) and built up. Blew my mind, it did.
Something that came up but I am unable to find a source to it and so am skeptical is apparently it's proven that men are less able to detect tone - vocal nuances - then women. The butt of much humor and annoyance (the whole "I'm fine" shit), apparently this discrepancy has its origins in the fact that women were much more social - staying back and doing community stuff whilst the men where huntering and gathering and so they needed to develop their social skills better. Interesting if true. This article has some interesting stuff about the differences between men and women based on historical sex selection: men typically left home to conquer new lands and whatnot because it gave them better odds at procreating. And so, this dude hypothesizes, all of us are descendants of the risk-taking guys who left women behind and this is why men are more aggressive and competitive and women are more social, open, etc.
Also, randomly, we learned about the Codes of Hammurabi: the first written laws ever. There are some cool ones, like if a slave bites his master, the master can kill him. Etc.

that's extreme

2007-08-18T20:44:00.000-06:00

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

Dirty

2007-08-06T21:13:00.000-06:00

I've got sand in my hair but it don't worry me none.
My week was fine... classes were present, as was controversy. See, once a week we go to a hospital where we have a clinical coach teach us how to give physical exams. Our clinical coach was a nice but older psychiatrist = doesn't know how to do physical exams well. Further, it was in a private hospital so we had catered lunch every time we came. While we liked him and, more, the food, it was annoying that we weren't learning much and, as a result, not doing as well as our classmates on the physical-exam assessments. So after many weeks of loyalty, we did the ultimate dick move and went over his head and got a new coach. Without telling him. Oh well. Our first session with the new coach is later today and while she will be much better, I will surely miss those little meat pies.
On Wednesday was the last day of work for a friend of mine. She waitressed at a nice-ish Italian restaurant and I'd always been meaning to go and never had gotten around to it. Since it was the last night and there was mention of discounted food, I rounded up some mates and headed over there. We had home-brought wine, without corking fee, and 2 appetizers and 3 gourmet pizzas, filling 4 of us to the extreme, for 18.50$ AUD. Plus we were there till closing and since we were friends and they were closing, they gave us lots of food to take home: bacon, snow peas, roasted pepper, cashews, jalapeños, etc. It was a glory-hole of eatery. The next day I used their power for good and made my own money pizza.Early Friday morning I got picked up to go camping on loverly Moreton Island. I went with one girl from my discussion group and then a bunch of her friends (also from med). They are hippiesh and therefore called the Dirties. We get to the ferry and put all our luggage on... and man it was a lot. These motherfuckers know how to camp: tables, coolers filled with BBQs, 2 guitars, tons of food, and an amazing thing known as a jaffle iron.
We cross the beautiful ocean, seeing dolphins, and disembark from the barge. Unload the crap, take a look around, and walk to a nearby campsite. It was so beautiful... we were right on the beach but enclosed by trees... the ocean was blue and had some wrecks in it.
We took over several campsites, unpacked, fixed up some jaffles for lunch. A jaffle is an Australian tradition, apparently, that is more or less the same as a george-foreman-pressed-panini-type sandwich. The iron has two handles that clasp together, with a thing to put a sandwich in and then place in the fire. Since you're camping and it's wood-smoked and hungry, anything you put in the jaffle automatically tastes amazing. Featured sandwiches were: avocado and cheese, baked bean and cheese, peanut butter and honey, marshmellow and chocolate, leftover pasta sauce (broccoli and onion) with cheese, sausage, cheese, and a raw egg (and it cooked in the fire.. marvelous) , and the smorgasbord: canned beans, chick peas, corn, brown rice, cheese, curry powder. It sustained me to no ends.
We spent the 2.5 days sunning, playing frisbee, swimming (though the water was fairly cold), and sand-sledding. This is an awesome (EXTREME!!!!!one) thing where you take a sled, or in our case a waxed plank of wood, down a sand dune. About a 1 hr walk along the beach from our campsite, we turned into the island, walked about 15 minutes through forest, and then got to a desert with dunes... it was so cool. We then proceeded to spend hours sledding down and climbing up. We started plain, then worked up to double, face first, double face first, triple, and then ended on a foursome.
My first time I rocked out but this was my second time and it was obviously less glorious.
The weekend passed idly and well. Eating and chilling by the fire, chatting and singing. Two people brought guitars, 1 guy brought a conga drum, and someone brought a bunch of maracas, so there was massive sing-a-longing. A lot of fun was made at my expense because I was the only 'merican out of 15 people and my accent is funny. Also, I'm funny. Ohh, one awesome "too-soon" joke I just remembered!
Someone mentioned some cliche or phrase and I said it similarly but weirdly...I don't remember exactly, but it's like if someone said "kill two birds with one stone" and I said "eat two potatoes with one fork" or something. Then they said, "well that's one way to put it" and I said, "it's just a saying in my hometown" and they replied, "well there must be something in the water, then" and another girl said, "yeah, a bridge."
I laughed so hard, it was great. The weekend passed by quite quickly and my only regret was missing out on my lovely markets. Oh well.
This week has passed quickly already. (I started this post yesterday...) Our new clinical coach was awesome. She totally knew what she was doing, had a no-nonsense approach to teaching it, and made sure we all knew what we were doing. Last night I watched the new Harry Potter movie and boy was I disapointed. Not by the quality of the movie (as I had anticipated shittiness) but by the movie's quality. It was a hand-held camera, whose operator was focusing and unfocusing every 2 minutes. I don't understand - you focus on the screen...what else changes? I was dismayed because I downloaded the 2nd Harry Potter in the winter of 2002 and the quality was better than this one. Jesus.
Today we had anatomy lab for the first time in a while, and it was dissection, baby! By the luck of the draw, we were given the leg of Mrs. Thunder Thighs McGraf... ugh, it was nasty. Over an hour spent peeling away at the fat on one thigh. Like they have 'Scared Straight' programs where juvenile delinquents meet prisoners to keep them out of trouble, they should send fat people to these kinds of labs to scare them into losing some weight. Ugh.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
As I mentioned previously, we're working on cancer these days. This week was about breast cancer: the horrible motherfucker which affects 1/8 women. Apparently, risk factors are age of first period (younger=worse), number of pregnancies (0=worse), and age of menopause (older=worse). I have decided that if I have a daughter, I'm going to use hormones to delay her puberty until she's 22, then let her get pregnant once, then take out her ovaries (a surgical procedure with the awesome name of oophorectomy) and so she will pretty much be guaranteed against breast cancer. She'll be guaranteed to have osteoporosis, I guess, but what can you do?
Speaking of cancer: smoking. Apparently, smoking releases an awesomely-termed substance known as 'rogue nucleotides' that skeez their way into your DNA (DNA is made of nucleotides as the base... G,C,A,T as you may have heard of). One thing they really damage is mitochondrial DNA (the mitochondria is the power supplier for the cell). Old appearances are, supposedly, caused by death of the mitochondria and thus smoking -> looking like an older person.
To help fight cancer, you need medicine against pain (analgesics): anywhere from advil to morphine. The mechanism of different analgesics (and anti-inflammatories, usually lumped in together) is various and awesome. They all affect different pathways and different enzymes and are crazy. Advil leads to GI bleeding and kidney failure, yet is a great analgesic and somehow anti-platelet aggregation (for heart attack patients). Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is randomly analgesic yet doesn't control fever, and no one knows why. (Note: to kill yourself, you need to take between 20-30g of acetaminophen, but stay hidden for 24 hours, because they can bring you back within that time). Heroin, in its pure form, has exactly twice the analgesic effect of morphine with the same adverse effects, yet you don't see it being used in hospitals for whatever reason.... Codine and the like are similar to morphine but much less potent (which is why you can purchase them more easily). An interesting adverse effect of them is decreased gut motility (constipation) and so if you have traveler's diarrhea somewhere, you can take it to ease the pain and reduce the diarrhea!
One more thing - this one is really random but quite awesome. In hemoglobin (the molecule in blood that carries oxygen) we have what as known as a porphyrin ring, which holds iron. If a person is deficient in the supply/function of that ring, it's known as porphyrinsm. This is a genetically-passed trait and so in small communities with some inbreeding, it can have higher presence. Since the person is anemic, their skin is very sensitive to light. Also, their gums retract higher than normal and they really crave iron. So in a community out in the middle of nowhere - say, Transylvania, Romania - they found people who would be out at night, fanged, drinking fresh cow's blood. It gets better. This was during the time of witchcraft and all that and so they obviously wanted to kill them, so they'd capture them and bring them wherever. The people, obviously defensive, would bite their captors and the mix of their blood with the blood of the person being bitten would have a reaction and leave a mark! One more sweet point (that I came up with so it may not be true) has to do with garlic. Garlic is a known blood-coagulant (it's contraindicated in post-heart-attack patients on blood thinning medications such as aspirin, Warfarin, or Heparin) and so I guess those poor porphryistic people would avoid garlic.
!

A case of courageousness

2007-07-31T02:25:00.000-06:00

Victory is upon us, for this is my 50th post. However, losses were taken along the way.
Consider my poor bike lock: this combination lock has been with me through thick and thin, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Korea, and Australia. Resilient, yet gradually acquiring the signs of age reminiscent of a grandparent: weakened flexibility, finickiness, less pliant numbers, hard to turn. But it held on, with the digits of the combination mostly worn off, proud of its status as The Guardian. It finally succumbed to that over-residing Darkness that foils us all, animate and non in a way that most of us are likely to pass on: by the follies and carelessness of others and The Machinery of our world.
The tale of the passing of our intrepid protector involves the dangerous, indulgent, and selfish acts of the very soul that was being protected: The User. A sordid tale of debauchery and recklessness: misuse of substances and technology; capricious attitude towards law; cold; speed.
Did our friend, our keeper pass on for naught, or will the way in which it persevered and was broken live on, serving as a flag for us to take off our hats to and contemplate our actions before we proceed? I'm afraid not. He's gone and it was in vain.
Lockheed, you will be missed.
So what happened was this: Friday night I was at Ben's house, where he made a glorious dinner for myself, his gf and other housemate. The liquor store down the corner was having an amazing sale of wine, which lead him to purchase 16 bottles for 51$ AUD. And it was decent; we're not talking Carlo Rossi here. So we each had a bottle or two over a healthily competitive game of Scrabble (thank you MOTIVATE!) and 500 and laughs and chats. I made a decent little cake, too. 2am rolled around and I was getting tired and ready for the homestead. I chose to bike home, because that is my favorite form of transportation and biking while drunk is fun. I also maintain that it should be okay because the worst you can do is kill yourself, unlike with driving drunk you can kill others. But it was cooooold outside and I was dressed merely in shorts and a very thin long-sleeved T-shirt. Like in the 40s. So I was biking home as fast as possible, to heat up and arrive home, and along the way my bike lock must have somehow jumped off my rack (something which has never happened before). Given my speed and state of mind, I didn't hear it. I realized the loss when I got home, but I was too tired and wasted to bike back (so many hills!) and waited for the next morning. I did the route again and I couldn't find it. Yesterday Ben's gf found the lock, forever ruined due to some car running over it, breaking off the locking mechanism. I'm an idiot and mad because it was a nice little lock.Hmm..
I guess I could spend a whole post writing about a bike lock, but that would be pretty silly, no?
The rest of my weekend was alright.
Friday I did a lot of study at school, then went to dinner at Ben's house and... well we know what happens. On Saturday, I went off to the market's as usual and then came home with a dillema: do I continue to study, wanting to be a good student and knowing that I won't do anything on Sunday; or do I sit on my porch in the beautiful sunlight and read the newest Harry Potter? I chose the path more traveled on, and that has made all the different. Yes, I wasted 7 hours reading that thing and then forced myself to stop in order to go to sleep at midnight, as Sunday I was due to wake up early. I woke up at 6:30 and was picked up with my heretofore biking partner, Matt, to drive down to do a nice a bike ride (I know, sounds weird, but that's what happened). We biked 115k a bit down south, through nice, though dry, bush country. It was exhausting but fun. I also found a 20$ bill on the road! I also ate a ton, as you might imagine a hyperthyroidic person biking for exactly 5 and a half hours might do (1.5hrs cumulative rest time).I mentioned last week that Hyeshin's family was here. Here's a picture in case you're wondering what Koreans look like.Yes. It was very sunny.
Now I'm back at school and we're learning about Cancer. Yay.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Cancer is an interesting little thing. I mentioned before that we are all undergoing it and that it's a natural process. It's such a cock up, too, that it's annoying. When a cell is dividing (or choosing to do so) there are checkpoints that ensure a cell doesn't divide needlessly. When a checkpoint is fucked up (due to chemical signals and the like (for instance: p53 is a transcription factor that normally causes a bad cell to either fix or kill itself. A mutation in this causes lots of unchecked division: around 50% of all cancers are caused by mutation with p53, and they are usually the most aggressive/lowest survival rate ones)) then a cell is free to divide as it pleases. This causes abnormal growth. Most cells can divide 5, maybe 6 times before dying out. A cancer cell is immortal - it can divide indefinitely. The most infamous cancer cell-line is known as the HeLa line: some cervical cancer cells that were cultured in 1951 and still continue to divide and live, long past their progenitor.
Speaking of cervical cancer, I hope that all you ladies out there (under 28) have gotten your vaccines, right? The man who created is is a researcher at my school, incidentally enough, and it is a pretty amazing thing. In Australia, it's completely free for women under 28. In America, surprise surprise, it's not. The American health care system is disgraceful. I watched Sicko (which I recommend everyone see) and it's such a pity that such a wealthy country cares not for its (poor) citizens and is taken advantage of by drug companies and health insurance companies.
Like with this HPV vaccine (the vaccine itself is against human papiloma virus (genital warts):a common precursor against the cancer. The vaccine works against ~70% of HPV strains and so is not a fool-proof shield for cancer... more like a sieve), it's being released by Merck (horrible company) at 350$ a pop. Some health insurance companies see vaccines as "optional" and thus may not cover it (Source)
...

testing...testing

2007-07-24T06:37:00.001-06:00

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

Segway'd

2007-07-21T18:23:00.000-06:00

My dear devoted readers, I do apologize for my wholly unblogginess. There has been a drought in Brisbane these days and I'm afraid my will has wilted. Also I've had a visitor crashing in my bed these last two weeks, rendering exciting adventures a thing of the past.
I finally returned to Aus to settle into the grind, yet there was no grind to be settled into or upon as 2 days later my girlfriend, Hyeshin, came to town. Since she's been here, time has been a bedlam of cooking and eating, walking and biking, talking and laughing.
See, I like segways. No, not the kind that you use to walk your child; rather, the kind that allow a gentle sway, an overlap, from one period to another. As we all know, it ain't easy going from vacation straight to school - you might get a case of the schoolies. For me it's indubitably tougher in that I went from USA-summer-freefood-family-oldfriends-nostudy to AUS-winter-payfood-nofamily-newfriends-studylikeanoffice, and so a segway or two is indispensable. Time in Sonoma was a good segway1: I had some family, but not all, no friends but free food. Going to bed early and getting up early was a transition toward schooliness, too. Now, these last two weeks, segway2, have been a great slide into school: study but not a lot, pay for food but not the only one cooking, seeing friends, having psuedo-family. She will leave tomorrow and then it's finally back into the grind, only 3 weeks late. And I have to catch up and it's reproduction unit!
Exciting things, for you, are limited but I guess I can present them in that ever-so-easy manner: the bulletin point.
-Eatin'! I don't know if I'd mentioned this before, but about 2 months ago a local gym, FitnessFirst, had an open day where you could do some classes for free. I went in for a two-step class that rocked my body. There were 35 people in the class and afterward, the instructor went around handing out little prizes (t-shirts and water-bottles) to hot bitties to sponsor FitnessFirst. He had one special prize that he handed to me for whatever reason (hottest; sweatiest; tried the hardest; best for a newbie; worst for a newbie; smelliest; only person doing it in sandles): a gift voucher for 2 to a buffet restaurant in Bumblefuck! So fast-forward to last week (I guess it would require a rewind, no?) when melady and I hopped on a bus to go way up north to this restaurant. This was a weird place. It was an 'Entertainment Services Club' but there were no hookers. It was a whole complex of stores and restaurants and bars and a casino, owned by some group, but it wasn't a mall. Anyway we went to one restaurant, the Coral Sea Cafe (which had an aquarium, projector screens showing The Living Sea, but no seafood) and had a very mediocre all-you-can-eat. The desserts were the best so I took about 10 brownies home with me. We ended up catching a bus or two back, with an annoying altercation with the driver that's still leaving me seething (let's just say I got pwned out of a dollar).
-Bikin'! In Korea, the only place you bike is in a parking lot. It's not a mode of transportation and barely a mode of exercise, so I needed to kick it up a notch and learn Hyeshin how do bike. The first day we went about 5k (RT) to a beautiful park on the river to have Brie, avocado, bread, and wine. The next time we went about 15k (RT) to the markets that I love so much to purchase an obscene amount of food. The next day we went about 28k (RT) on a full-on tour-de-Brís to see the sites, eat the foods, and bike the river. It was glorious. She was in pain.-Cookin'! One Friday night, I decided to invite my PBL discussion group over to meet and greet and eat. I cooked up a Mexican feast (guac, salsa, steak, chicken, nachos, rice, beans, tortillas, lime daiquiris) and we all had a laugh and a bite and got sauced (and I'm not talking molé). Other nights we have been alternating cooking, which has been a real treat for me because, though I love cooking, I do it every night and it's nice getting different shit every now-and-then. She does Korean stuffs, and I do my own.
-Drinkin'! The nice thing about having a guest is that there's always an excuse to drink. Gin'n'tonic for lunch? check. Beer for the walk? check. Wine at dinner? check. Last week was our last class with the current tutor. Our discussion groups switch tutors 3 times a year; last time we switched a tutor was wine & cheese. This time we decided to class it up a notch with pizza and beer. It was great, discussing the genetics of Down's syndrome while getting fully wasted and wastefully full. Since there were extras and I'm in a hypermetabolic state, I ate, I believe, 12 slices and half a calzone, with 4 strong beers.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Thesedays, abortion is quite the hot-topic. Or nowadays. Or the last 10 years. But especially these last 3 weeks. The legality of abortion is a tricky little momma that will have any discussion ending in name-calling and use of dog-doo on a stick. Here in 'stralia, it changes state-by-state. In most states, early term abortion (first 12 weeks) is funded by Medicare and legal, as long as it meets Section 232: the termination must be in the interest of the health of the mother. 'Health' is an operative word, as it can refer to mental, emotional, physical, economical, or whatever else you want. In order to try a doctor for aborting, under the Menhennit rules, you must prove that his first intention was to end the baby, not to help the mom out. This is nearly impossible.
As far as the medical side of the abortions go, I was surprised to learn how not-a-big deal they are. A medical abortion, taking a pill, RU-486, can actually be more stressful and annoying than a surgical abortion. Medical abortion the woman might feel nauseous and bleedy and need to be supervised for at least 3 days and upto 2 weeks. A surgical abortion (where they take a tiny device, the size of a pen, insert into the uterus and vacuum out the fetus) takes 6-10 minutes (!) and usually people are okay later that day. Hmm!
Speaking of things that make you go 'Hmm!' is heroin. We had an extremely tangential lecture that ended up discussing the merits of heroin. Yes, you read that correctly: merits. This doctor said that taken in the right dosage and purity, these being a big problem in the illicit drug scene, heroin has pretty much no real damage on any organ of the body and all-in-all is much healthier than alcohol or tobacco. As per its addictive quality, he said that during the Vietnam War, ~45% of US soldiers, in Vietnam, were using heroin. They had to stay clean for 10 days to get back to USA; post-return studies showed that only 2% were still using. Addictive? Harumph!

I rue this day

2007-07-05T01:32:00.000-06:00

Hello my steady doppelgängers, I am sorry that I haven't updated in so long. Believe me - I am sorry. I now have to remember and write all the shit that's happened in the last weeks and, unfortunately, it's a lot. Fuck.
Well first: I had my exam. Woo! Glad that was over with. It was a toughie, that fine Thursday morning. Afterwards was debauchery the likes of which can only be seen by medical students. I complimented it, of course, by having a gin'n'tonic ready in my Nalgene, with lime and everything, waiting for me when I finished. The exam-takers quickly moved to the university bar, conveniently located downstairs from the test rooms, and rowdiness ensued. I had gone to the bar 2 days prior to let them know that ~300 people would be going there and they adjusted drink specials accordingly. At one point (this was 2pm) a guy got up and peed right in a potted plant, in front of everybody, in front of a window, behind which people sat. He got escorted out to jeers and cheers. My friends and I merely grimaced at the thought of the medical profession's future.
I called it an early evening because I had to start baking to prepare for Friday's picnic. I made a glorious cheesecake and then called it a night. The next morning, I got up, chilled and basked in my freedom from the excess of study the previous weeks held. I prepared another dish for the picnic and set off. We all met at the ferry stop and head off to a nice park to barbecue, drink, and have make general merry.It was a resplendent night, I must say. We hung out at the park, which was on the river, and ate a lot and made jokes and hung out and, as if of course bound to happen, talked about what we put on the test and undermined each other's confidence. We then headed off to one of the lady's house and drank a bit more and told jokes and stories.

you don't even want to know what this story was about

We then flew off to a cool bowling alley/bar place. I bowled much worse than I ever have in my life but it was in good spirit because it's Australia and, let's face, these people cannot bowl. Adjoining the alley was a bar with live music where we played darts and rocked out for a while. I was getting ready to head off (it was 11pm and I had a flight the next morning) but I was convince to stay out and do something really outrageous: go bar/clubhopping in the city!
I hate doing that shit. For one, you have to dress up. You also have to wait in line and sometimes have to spend money to go to a crowded place that's feature is 12$/beer night. But I did it. We ended up going to a really skeezy place called the Down Under Bar - located at the basement of the biggest hostel in Brisbane - renowned for it's sleazy bartenders and even sleazier patrons. We danced. A lot.I only ended up getting home at 3am, when I had to pack and get ready for my flight in a couple hours.
The flights home went very uneventfully. God bless Ambien. I flew with Air New Zealand, which was a very nice little company with a nice airplane. I watched a couple movies, none of them exceptionally shitty - impressive for an airplane, and ate the ahead-of-time-ordered Asian meal. It was not good.
I arranged to have an extended layover in LA, since I had two friends whom I had met in Korea living there. Sweetly enough, one of them was having a surprise birthday part for the other! And I made a lovely surprise.
I have previously talked about Chase, but this will be a nice recap to show how socially amazing he is and how many weird little adventures we get into together.
He meets me at the airport, idling his time flirting with a really hot girl, and we drive off. He goes to buy a present for Mike, the other guy, and in the store is constantly talking to random people. We all meet up, Surprise!, and have a couple cocktails with the nasty Captain Morgan's Black Rum I bought in the Duty Free on the way over for 10$. We have to run a quick errand and in the parking lot, Chase decides to pull aside a random dude and have him be in our picture. He does and it turns out the guy's a high management guy for American Airlines. Business cards are swapped. We set off to Redondo Beach, near his place, to check out some sun and get some food. We hang out on the pier for 5 minutes before turning around to walk to the main strip to go to a Mexican restaurant. We are walking in a heavily peopled area when I notice my friends step over a nice wad of cash. I swoop and get it: 4 crisp 20$ bills, folded together.
I panic.
See, there's nothing I love more than free money. I am a J-O-O, after all. But I also do have a conscience and a brain and know that this did come from some person. I hang around the area for 5 minutes, frantically searching for a frenetic person seeking out monies. He or she does not come. I ask my friends if I should bring it to the cops. They scoff, saying that the cops will just pocket an indiscriminate amount of cash like that. They further persuade me, saying that in this area everyone is loaded anyway and I should consider it karma for being a good guy.
"Well then," I says, "dinner's on me."
We head over to the Mexican joint (I've been living in Australia for 5 months at this time, remember, so all I want is Mexican food) and wait in line for 15 minutes to get a table outside. In the meantime, Chase recruits a couple 9 year-old-boys on skateboards to cruise around, asking girls if they want to have a drink. Everyone sitting in the patio of the restaurant is watching and laughing, egging the kids on and giving advice. The kids do it with minimal success and we sit down when a kid finally comes back with a really cute girl and some friends, with whom Chase immediately begins chatting. They hit it off, digits are exchanged, we are in awe. After she leaves, a table gets up to leave and one of the women says that she likes "Chase's style" and gives him her business card, instructing him to call her for her niece's number, whom she promises is hot. We eat and drink margaritas and talk to all the people around us who are so involved with us.
We leave and walk down the beach promenade where there are houses. We notice some raucous 40ish year-old-women drinking and singing karaoke on their patio. We start chatting with them and they reward us with super-strong vodka-cranberries. They are all rich bitties from Texas who have been surgeried and Botoxed beyond recognition, on holidays. We stay for a bit, act polite, drink, and then walk a little more till we get to the apartment of one of the guys' friends. This apartment is on the beach and we watched the sunset over the ocean from his house as he offered us shots of 1000$-a-bottle whiskey. This guy was some super-rich dude who had a limosine company, entailing Nelly's personal Phantom that was sitting in this guy's garage. He was pretty down-to-earth and amazingly nice - all this made me feel the worse for stealing a bunch of his shit. Just kidding. It was surprising, though, how nice the dude was.
We head back to the car, feeling full and good, and start off for the guys' apartments (don't worry, Mike's little bro was DD). The surprise party was kickin' when we got there. Lots of rich people and everything. I don't understand the Business Person and don't understand their lifestyle. I'm not particularly jealous, to speak soothe, but kind of curious. Anyway, I left the party early to catch my 12:30AM flight to Minneapolis.
I got home and it was very nice to see the family, friends, and, dare I say, Minneapolis. I hate Minnesota but early June is pretty loverly. I did get to finally meet my little bro, Ben T. Cherrypit, and, though I hate babies, he is a decent bloke. He did throw up on me the first time I held him, though... I also got to see my stupid dog who was forced to wear a lampshade. She's looks like (and is) such an idiot I couldn't help but laugh at the dumb pooch who would continuously lick her wound after surgery.I won't bore you with the mundane details of the rest of my time back home. Highlights include: going biking with the family - meeting my older brother's girlfriend Sylvia for the first time, who was nicer and more attractive than we the image we feared in our minds
- going to Fogo de Chao. Twice. This is one of those churrascaria restaurants where you get unlimited awesome meat sliced onto your plate. The first time we went there was nice but nothing special. The second time was the coup de grace. See, they had a Father's Day sweepstakes where you could enter your dad to be a Gaucho for a day, so he could cut the meat and shit and, more important, 8 people can come and eat while he's working. So, being the loving father that my dad is, he entered himself under our names and won. Well, you can't argue with that.
- I got to be 1st assist at several surgeries with my dad, which was fucking amazing. The first one, the point where my dad had me grab the 1 month old's testicle outside of the scrotum with my forceps made me pretty damn queasy and I immediately had to set the forceps and teste down before I fainted. By the last surgery, I was a pro... at cutting wire.
- I found out that I'm sick. Yay! See, you might be able to tell from picture, but I have recently lost a decent chunk of weight. Like more than 20lbs in less than 2 months I also noticed higher heart, breathing, and defecation rate than normal. Oh oh, spaghettio! Turns out I have a thyroid problem, something which I couldn't take care of in America with my family because health-care in the States is just tooooooo good for an uninsured bloke like me. Oh well. Back in Australia to get that shit fixed.
- My last day in MN I went hiking with my mommy in a cool state park in Wisconsin called Perrot State Park. It was a bit of a drive away (~3hrs) but well worth it. We went hiking on some cool bluffs and canoed along the lovely Trempeleau river. Afterwards we stopped by at a BBQ restaurant. I normally don't like BBQ food, and this was no exception. I even got sauce all over my shirt, like in any movie or TV show, which is something that I have never done! I was abashed. At least I snapped this pic of myself:After leaving Minnesota, I headed off to Sonoma, where my dad has an awesome place to hang up his hat or two. I flew Frontier Airlines, which had a nifty little thing I'd never seen before, where you can pay to watch what you want. 5$ to get DirectTV for the whole flight and 1$ for a PPV movie. Good deal, all in all, but I had my Archos. It was gorgeous over there and the days were filled with swimming, chores, eating, and drinking wine, of course. One night I even got to babysit.

Like all good things, they say, this vacation too had to come to an end. My flights back were good and plentiful. I flew Alaska Air from Sonoma to LAX and they had free good microbrew beer on the flight! A fabulous first. When I first alighted onto the aircraft, I saw that my seat was conveniently placed next to a very fat woman with a lap "baby" who had to have been at least 3 years old. This was a small airplane and the seats weren't that big. I immediately approached the flight attendant, who's name I shit you not was Dawn Summer, and said that I needed a new seat. I got a row to myself and safely made my way to LA. I saw this gem in LAX; it's so perfect it would need a 1000 words to describe it:Ah, Northwest, I have never hated a thing more than I hate you. I was so happy to not have to fly on that airline for my 12 hour LAX-Auckland flight. They somehow had no window-seats or exit-rows when I checked in, so I grudgingly took the aisle. I sat down next to some squares and immediately looked around me like a prairie-dog ready to save the day, seeking out a better seat. I noticed a little woman sitting all alone at the window of her own aisle. I got up (they had locked the doors and were rolling, as they say) and asked the flight attendant if I could move there. She asked what my seat number was and where I wanted to move to (46G/51C). Luckily, I just pointed because she came up with some malodorous doctrine saying that one is allowed to move laterally within the row, but not up or down! What the F is that? I sat down in my rightfully earned seat and started chatting up the woman who's flight I obviously ruined by prohibiting her from lying down. Luckily she was drunk and had separated from her husband the previous day and was willing to talk. At some point a different flight attendant tried to get me to move back (this was because I had gotten back up to get my stuff since we were sitting on the runway for 10 minutes and I had nothing to do besides watch my cock get smaller) and I told him that it was okay. It was great - that extra room really pays off on a 12 hour flight. Ambien Again!
In NZ I bought some gin in the duty free (2 1-liter bottles for 24$ US), snapped this photo of the blue screen of death making its appearance, and jumped on the next flight, where sadly I wasn't sitting with no one next to me; instead, I had a really ugly old woman. Seriously, I'm usually not that judgmental but this woman would be kicked out of the pug category in the Blue Ribbon Dog Show.So I finally landed, 8AM, in Brisbane after traveling for exactly 24 hours. Fortunately, the Brisbanites had thought ahead and had not 1 but 2 immigration officers to handle the 3 planes of Chinese people that had just landed. After that stupid hour, I went through customs where they nabbed my dried cherries (I crammed a handful in my mouth before I let them throw it) but not the alcohol (I was over the limit of how much you can bring! Ha!) and then trained it to the city, just in time to miss my bus. After waiting 30 minutes, I got home with enough time to change my shirt, liberally apply deodorant and cologne (boy howdy I smelled) and then run off to class, where I was met surprisingly warmly.
So now I'm back in business and some busy times ahead. I have a video-taped history-taking/interview with a patient thing and a stupid 10page essay due in 2 weeks and HyeShin comes this weekend and will be here. Plus I have to catch up on the stuff I missed this week.

A real good time

2007-06-02T04:41:00.000-06:00

Hello all, I hope you are doing well. I am fine; as fine as one can be, I suppose.
This last week has been plain with few-to-no highlights. The one cool thing was that I got to do a urinalysis on myself. Dipstick test and a culture test: I got no bacteria in my urethra! Huzah! Other than that, I have been studying a lot. Our test in T-minus 5 days (thank christ) and it's all about that. On Wednesday we were supposed to have our Frisbee championship. Free pizza and beer and a battle to the death. It was canceled because of the rain we've been getting lately and instead I studied for almost 12 hours. It was pretty impressive.
Last night I went over to my friend Ben's house where he made a nice dinner and then he, his housemate, and I drank many beers and played 3 games of Scrabble. 2 of the games were speed Scrabble where you have only 1 minute to play, with a timer that beeps at 30 seconds and 10 seconds left. Fuck, it was nervewracking - I thought I'd have an MI. Anyway I won them all (sweet) and enjoyed my bike ride home.
I was in the park a couple days ago, doing pull-ups near a family. The little girl turned to her father and said, "that man is really clever at that!" I don't know which was more: the cuteness of her using 'clever', or the strangeness that I am a 'man' [adult].
Today I went to the market as usual and then went to study. This upcoming week we have no classes and so all it will be is study and cooking and eating. I look not forward to it. But I do look forward to Thursday at 12:01pm, because then I'll be done and happy and partying until I fly home on Saturday.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
-A urinary tract infection is caused by normally-not-present bacteria setting up shop and wreaking havoc on your poor urinary system. Clinically, it is defined as having "more than 10^5 of the same organism per ml of urine". Let that sink in. That means if you have 9000 living bacteria cells in 1 ml of urine (1ml=1 kernel of corn), then that's okay. Bacteria are crazy.
-UTIs are an interesting thing. They are the most common infection that humans get, more than stomach or pneumonia or anything. 40% of women will get a UTI in their life. That means that if 10 women are reading this blog, I'll be surprised. An unfortunately pervasive kind is termed "honeymoon cystitis" (cystitis means inflammation of the bladder), which women get during their honeymoon due to lots and lots of sex. Sweat and other things mix around down in that area and coupled with the friction of sex send lots of organisms flying up the urethra. The main culprit is E. Coli. That's the little guy who causes Traveler's Diarrhea and inspired that whole meat-scare of the 90s. How does it get there? Ever notice how close the vagina is to the anus? Yeah. It is.
-I think this is something that is kind of on the downlow in the non-medical community, but in medicine, everything (drugs, operations, treatments, etc.) have a Number Needed to Treat (NNT) value that gives a statistical value for the efficacy of a certain thing. If a drug to take to prevent strokes, for instance, has an NNT value of 20, that means 20 people have to take it for it to save one life. Depressing if you think about it, isn't it?

Early mornings and productive days

2007-05-27T04:26:00.000-06:00

So last week ended well enough. On Friday night was a rugby game of Med vs Law school... yes, the ultimate professions fight in a match to see who gets to get paid more for the rest of their lives. The game was pretty fun to watch as I'd never seen rugby before and it was an interesting (read: violent) sport. I was with some mates and it was a beautiful night and a great way to unwind after studying Evidence Based Medicine. At the thing was a 5$ all-you-can-eat nasty sausages and all-you-drink lethal punch. After several cups, I was nicely smashed and having a good time. I rode with my friend back to his house, hung out for a bit, then went back home to fall asleep around 12:30.
Come 5am on Saturday, I was wide awake. It's an interesting phenomenon, the mechanism I do not know, that sometimes if I drink a lot, I wake up the next morning much earlier than normal and feeling much more refreshed than when I sleep normally. I know that this is strange and counter-intuitive but it's true. I checked my email because I was due to play at a beach Frisbee tournament and was waiting to hear from my ride. I didn't hear from him so I guess no beach Frisbee for me. I laid around for a while, watched 2 episodes of Scrubs, and as the dawn was dawning, decided to bike up the local cute mountain we have here in Brisbane: Mt Coot-tha.It was a beautiful morning as I rode on the river and up the mountain. It was a struggle getting up there, lemme tell you. As I got to the top, I watched the morning calm settling over Brisbane, as the fog around the city was lifting. I even observed a sad sight that led me intuit that some unlucky fellow didn't have as pleasurable a Friday night as I. Oh well, Mr. Anonymous. I wish you good luck in the future.
Well I got home at 8am, with the whole day ahead of me and already being tired. I made a smoothie, and spent some time fucking around on the internet. I then went to my precious market, came home and made breakfast, talked to family and then went to school to study. For whatever reason (hmm, I wonder why) I was an unproductive mess at school and hardly got any work done. I came home, at some dinner, watched Scent of a Woman and went to sleep early.
Today was pretty typical for a lame Sunday: wake up, talk to family (I talked to Roee who goes to Peru tomorrow with Meryll Page!), eat poached eggs, go to school to study, come home, eat, watch shit, etc. Sigh. Oh well, soon I'll be done with my test and never have to study again... until July.
Anyway, as I observed last week, my blog was rapidly developing to a food-for-thought...no, food-for-cooking forum. I have become quite the foodie lately and really love cooking and buying stuff to cook with. As I'm trying to fall asleep, I even think about possible recipes to make. Anyway, as an outlet for my foodism, I've started a food blog: http://meacooks.blogspot.com. It's only recipes and whatnot, so don't go there if you're looking for the typical insight and humor of this site, only if you want to be inspired to eat like a kingly sort of person.

2007-05-24T04:16:00.000-06:00

Hey all, it's been a while since I last rapped at you... I hope you are doing well. Everything is going alright on this side of the equator. It's getting near crunch time as I have my big mid-year test in 2 weeks. But after that heading back to MN for some free food and easy livin'. sweet.
In case you were wondering, last weeks cookie's turned out to be quite the success in class. The week went by as could be imagined. On Thursday I had dinner at a friend's place with 2 other people and we played some scrabble and had some gin n' tonics... who can complain about such fine pleasures in life? The rest of the weekend was plain: tutoring, going to the market, studying, and heaps of cooking.
I got a food processor, my newest little baby, and so I've been fine tunin' my skills on that baby. I spent the weekend making pesto (basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic), My dad's schug (heaps of cilantro, jalapeño and chili peppers, olive oil, garlic), salsa (tomato, cilantro, jalapeño, onion), and an amazing soup (boiled Brussels sprouts, garlic, onion, broccoli, squash, zucchini, 2 chili peppers, half a tomato and some bay leaves, sage, basil, bullion cubes, salt for about an hour, then chucked it in the processor and made a delicious creaminess), and fresh mandarin juice! I love my new toy.
Side note - while I had originally intended for this blog to be more medical-school-oriented, I think it's rapidly diminishing to a foodie blog. Thoughts?
So I mentioned earlier that I joined a Frisbee league. Well, for one reason or another, my team is actually pretty good. We've been winning steadily and yesterday we beat an undefeated team to go to the championship next Wednesday. That will be our last day of 'bee and to celebrate, there will be free pizza and beer at the game and a bar-tab at a pub afterwards. But since we're in the final game, everyone will be eating pizza and drinking while they watch us play! What the fuck? I had secretly, kinda, hoped we'd lose just so I didn't miss out on such an opportunity. You really cannot mess with free pizza and beer, even if it's Domino's... well, maybe not if it's Domino's.
So that's about all I have since I feel it's unnecessary to tell you about every dish I've made this last week (though I have made some beauts!) and what I've been studying (blasted kidneys!).
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I feel like I haven't done this in a while. For some reason, while I am learning more, I come up with less shit for this. Let's see what I can muster up....
I have cancer. You do, too! In everybody, cancer cells are continuously dividing, growing, etc around the body. This process is always happening. Luckily, we have some cool cells with the bad-ass name of Natural Killer cells who, usually, keep cancer at bay.
Everyone knows about the don't-break-the-seal phenomenon. Well that part of the alcohol-causing-pee rumor is psychological, but the way alcohol functions is that it suppresses Anti-Diuretic-Hormone. ADH causes little cute holes called aquaporins to manifest in your kidney tubules, thus allowing for resorption of water and less urine. Alcohol stops those holes and so water stays in the kidney tubules and comes out.
We're studying how to do cardiovascular physical examinations and one thing we've been learning about is syncope - fainting as a result of decreased blood flow and whatnot. Apparently, this can occur after a variety of different things, such as coughing, swallowing, urinating, and defecating. All these actions need action by your parasympathetic nervous system, which causes dilation of blood vessels. This dilation decreases the return of blood to the heart, causing fainting.

More food, cuz that's who I am

2007-05-13T06:21:00.000-06:00

Hey, hope you all are doing well. I am doing just fine. Let's see, what have you missed?
My week of school was alright. We learned how to do an ECG. In case you were wondering, that's that thing you see on the monitors in hospitals and on TV, with the peaks and whatnot. We got to do them on each other and learned how to interpret them. It's pretty cool how they work and being able to sort of read them. Alas, it didn't work on myself as I was too hairy. Oh well.
On Friday evening I went to a party. This was a real fine-tootin' hippie party, lemme tell you. It wasn't med-related; rather, was held by the girlfriend (and friends) of my Australian friend from my previous trip, with whom I go to the market and went hiking, etc. Man, were these people hippies. No one wore a shoe. The house had all these finger-paintings on it and there was no window that worked. It was a strictly vegetarian household, leaning towards vegan. I talked to a guy with long hair and one of those alpaca sweatshirt things whom, under different circumstances, I would have accused of overacting a stereotypical stoner-guy, but he was all real. They even made a chocolate fondue with marijuana butter! Howabout that? Anyway, I hung out there for a while and then left to go play a board game. Yes, I left a bumpin' parrrty to go play Cranium with 8 people from Brunei. That's how I roll. It was fun, save for the fact that it was Aussie Version and so all the cultural-relevant questions I was more clueless than my Asian counterparts. I stayed up later than I would have liked but it was all in the name of knowledge...I guess.
On Saturday I woke up a bit late and immediately hopped on my ride to the market. I was carrying my customary crate on the rack. I bought some good shit and went over to my aforementioned friend's (Justus, let's just give him a name) house for some lunch. It was quite delicious, in fact: we boiled some corn and some sweet and normal potato. Then we mashed the two potatoes with zucchini, garlic, Garam Masala, cumin, chives, and salt. Mixed in some milk and flour and then semi-fried it in some butter. Then added some grated cheddar and avocado slices on top. Fuck it was tasty. Also ate with a salad. We ate and chatted a while and then I left to go study and then swim. Came home, made some delicious Korean fried rice and watched The Covenant, a terrible witch/magic/teen-type movie that featured the following lines:
"Harry Potter can kiss my ass!" (when a witch-guy is doing a cool move.)
"Oooh... witchy!" (said to a witch-guy being annoying.)
And the eternal:
"I'm going to make you my wi-atch" (said by one witch-guy to another witch-guy whilst kicking his ass.)
Sunday morning, today, I woke up and talked to the family as usual. Made some poached eggs and a smoothie (mandarin, grapefruit, plum, lime, custard apple, and strawberry yogurt) and then went to school to study for several hours. Came back and made some delicious fresh salsa, guacamole and Mexican rice and ate with some nice corn chips. Then I got ready to bake for my class tomorrow morning. I've already baked some stuff for them and I try to keep it fresh. I got this recipe from a girl who's cookies I tasted (that sentence came out...awesome) and they were good. Well, I made them and they turned out to be fuckin' good, so I'm reproducing the recipe here, free of charge!
Preheat oven at 180C/356F
Melt together:
150g (5.3oz) of dark cooking chocolate
180g (~1 cup) of margarine or butter (I used butter)
Mix:
2 cups of flour
1.5 cups sugar (I used white)
3/4 cup of cooking cocoa
Then add:
Choco-butter combination
3 beaten eggs
Mix together and add some chocolate chips. Make into balls and space evenly on baking pan (I lined mine with wax paper)
Bake for about 10-15 min. Voila!:Anyway, that's enough excitement for now. I must go to sleep and start a new week, as weeks are wont to do. Salud

mmmm..blog

2007-05-08T03:04:00.000-06:00

Hey all, I hope this May finds you well. I am doing alright, though getting busier with school. Yea, I do out-of-school study every single day these days, as the big exam is in a month. The last week was normal, but nice in that it was 3 day weekend-ish. On Friday, 6 of us from my little group went out to dessert and dinner. Yes you read that correctly and in the correct order. We ate dessert first as one girl had to leave early and that was the real reason for our expedition. For you see, this one fancy desserteria had been spoken about droolingly around the tables the last couple weeks and I just had to organize an expedition to check out its main attraction: white chocolate-raspberry dumplings that you dip in fudge sauce and ice cream. The dumplings (brioche) were more like mini donuts, סופגנייות for you hebrews, that were stuffed with this sauce. It was amazing. It was the most I've ever paid for dessert (12.50$ AUD) but I went halves on it and another dessert a girl ordered that was an amazing chocolate pudding (1st type, not 2nd) with berries and berry sorbet. After that, one girl went home and another replaced her and we went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant. Good drinks and foods. If you could believe it, I wasn't even able to finish my modest meal as I was so full. The 30 min bike ride home in the fresh air, along the river with the full moon was quite resplendent, you can believe.
Saturday I imposed my previous method of carting back groceries from the market and went a little overboard: Yes, you're looking at a bunch of asparagus, an avocado, a kilo of watermelon, a head of cauliflower, a head of broccoli, 4 sweet potatoes, a bag of white and red onions, a huge bag of Brussels sprouts, a red pepper, 3 grapefruit, a bag of grapes, 5 bananas, 5 vine tomatoes, 4 limes, 5 mandarins, a huge bunch of basil, 1 custard apple, 2 Chinese eggplants, 1 continental cucumber, 5 plums, a loaf of fresh baked sourdough bread and 12 free range eggs.
I hope to get through it all... some day. And it was around 25$ AUD, too. Needless to say, I've been making a dickload of smoothies.
The rest of the day was anticlimactic to that, of course. I watched Blade Runner (don't see what all the fuss is about) and then went to a friend's house for Gin'n'Tonix and a rousing game of Scrabble (where the hero was devastatingly defeated in the last second, losing by 3 points). Sunday found me studying, swimming, eating some delicious pasta made with the aforepictured basil and tomato, and watching The Hebrew Hammer. I recommend no one to watch that piece of filth. It was so stupid and the jewish jokes weren't even worthwhile.
Yesterday was Aussie Labor Day, so I joined some peeps at a nice park on the river for a full-on BBQ and some rousing cricket (yes, I now know what a wicket is!). A splendid afternoon and early evening. Today was back to school, where at the hospital we had our 2nd physical exam exam, this time on the respiratory system. It went well. I was supposed to teach this evening but my student apparently went to see a movie and forgot that I existed.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
There are several different kinds of drugs that people having a cardiac "episode" can take. One of them is Glyceryl Trinitrate, which is a NO vasodilator, meaning that it makes the blood vessels bigger thus allowing more blood flow, decreasing blood pressure, etc. What is interesting is that it has the same mechanism as Viagra and so can be rubbed/sprayed onto the penis for a full-on erection (Durex is perchance producing condoms in the future with a tiny amount of GTN in the tip). More interesting, however, is that it has the same formula as Trinitryl Glycerine, which is the chemical used to make dynamite. What a magical compound: cure angina, give an erection, and blow up a bridge.
Speaking of drugs, most people now know from commercials that taking some NSAIDs, like Aspirin, will help thwart a heart-attack. It prevents blocking of your heart arteries and can work preventively (take a small does every day) and can even, though it's not sure, help during a heart attack. It was observed in 5th century BC by Hippocrates and was known to most Native American tribes and Middle Eastern and Asian peoples. How can we, who live in this hypermanufactured world use it in case of the end of civilization/trapping on some island? Find a willow tree, debark it, and chew...preferably on the inside of the bark.

additional additional

2007-04-30T05:15:00.000-06:00

This was found on the package of seaweed that I recently purchased in Korea. Ah, Englishee, how I miss thee.
Anyway, things have kind of petered out since Rainbow Beach. Went right back into studies, as per usual. On Friday, after school I hung around, read and did some shit. I then went to a party that I didn't want to go to. See, in previous entries, I've applauded med parties for housing such a surprising amount of interesting, intelligent people. The people haven't changed but my surprise has diminished proportionally to my annoyance with the parties. They're every weekend and people just get fuckin' loose (that' Aus for 'trashed') and I can't be bothered. Anyway, I only went to the one on Friday since it was close enough that I could hear it from my room and a couple people from my group were there. I showed up relatively late and was greeted with a girl sliding down the stairs who, when I helped her up, had a stupid grin on her face. I mingled and hung out for a while and was finally put off after this situation (with whom I'm pretty sure wasn't a med student but a random):
A guy falls down, straight on his back. I help him up and he's leaning against the wall, unable to support his own wait or stand up straight. I go and get him a glass of water and return, offering it to him.
"You know what that insult is to me?" he interrogatively slurs at me.
"No, mate, it's not an insult. Just drink it and you will feel better," I heroically reply.
"If you don't stop, you're going to regret this...for your sake and mine," he smarmily rejoins.
"Alright, whatever dude, I'm just doing to leave this water right here," placing the cup on the stairs, "and you can drink it if you want," I offer.
Jeez, what a dick. It was like being back on Langdon St.
Saturday I did my normal market run. I was in the mode to buy a lot of shit, including some potted herbs for my housemate's birthday, and, fortuitously, I found a milk-crate along the way, and jimmy-rigged it to my rack, using only 1 bungee cord. I was so pleased with its performance that I'm pretty sure I will use it for the rest of my market runs. After the market and its automatic-subsequent lunch, I went to school to study for a couple hours. I came back early though for the b-day celebration. My housemate invited a couple peeps over and they had prepared an awesome cheese&wine&crackers&veggies&dips spread and a great chocolate cake. The next 5 or so hours were spent chilling on our porch, eating a shitload and chatting.
Sunday I dicked around all morning, then went to school to study and then did my swim. In the evening I watched Hot Fuzz, which was nice. Done.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Sorry, I've been a bit behind in this category. Recent learnings have been pretty dry stuff about cystic fibrosis, asthma, and respiration.
If you are ever having an asthma attack and have absolutely no access to a reliever or hospital care, then you can possibly help yourself by drinking a really strong coffee or eating a lot of dark chocolate, as these things contain xanthine - a β2-adrenoreceptor-agonist and functions similarly, though much poorer-ly, to salbutimol and other asthma drugs.

an imbeachable offense

2007-04-26T18:38:00.000-06:00

Hello all. I hope you are doing well. We may now begin.
I last left you with the joys of slowly sluicing my way into the realm of semi-doctordom. The rest of the week passed on amicably enough. On Friday night I stayed at home and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was nice but the fucking weirdest thing I've ever seen. Saturday I did my usual market run. Man, if you knew how much shit I got for how little, you'd be pretty upset.
Monday held a nice surprise: employment. These last couple months have been eating away at my savings and so I desperately needed work. Easy, well-paying, flexible, sinecure work. Due to some internetting done by my thoughtful girlfriend, I found a Korean student to tutor English. Conversational English! I meet the criteria: I can speak English. Hopefully I can get one more student through her network and thus be sustainable while I'm here.
The middle of this last week was much nicer than normal mid-week middles. Wednesday was ANZAC day and thus a public holiday. The people in my group and I decided that this was the perfect day to go up north to Rainbow Beach, where one of the guys' parents owned a house near the beach. This plan is something that I've wanted to do for quite sometime now and was pleased at its final fruition.
3 of the girls piked (Australian for ditched) so it was 5 guys and the token girl. We drove up about 2 hours and stopped by at one of the guy's parent's house. It was a huge house on a huge property in the middle of the country. It was gorgeous and his mom had a feast prepared for us. Arrived at the beach house late at night and drank and played taboo for a while. The house was nice, with enough bed-room for all of us and a less than 5 minute walk to the beach. We then walked down to the beach at like 1am and just sat looking at the innumerable stars and the waves. So nice.The next morning I went for a swim at around 6:30 with two other guys. The water was perfect temperature, clear, and nice and wavy. I spent almost an hour jumping and body surfing (this is when you lie flat and catch a wave and literally surf on it, just on your body. Terrible fun, it is) and then we went back to rouse the troops for some breakfast, where I discovered poached eggs. The rest of the day was spent lazing about the beach, swimming, drinking, swimming, playing cards, and a fabulous lunch followed by a swim.As it was dusking, one of the guys and myself set about building a campfire. We very quickly got it rip-roaring. As the sun was setting, we went it for a swim and came back as the others arrived with chairs and alcohol. The following 4 or 5 hours were spent chatting, drinking, playing games and skinny dipping (only the guys, though). Nothing nicer than getting warm and happy by the fire, then jumping into the perfect water, playing with the waves, floating and staring at the stars, then running back and warming yourself off by the fire... naked. We even made a plank across the fire and two of us walked across it. Yes, I know, stupid. But as with the jump off the green bridge, I made sure someone went first.
We left early Thursday morning, after a quick swim, and came back right in time for class. What a glorious little trip. I really like the peeps in my group and we had a bit of a bonding time up there, as well. After class, I had to go straight into the city for my first tutoring lesson and proceeded to wait...and wait for my student. My cellphone was dead so I couldn't call her. I sat at the place we were supposed to meet for about 30 minutes when I finally decided to take some action. I approached 2 random girls and asked them if I could insert my SIM card in their mobile. No, that's not a pick-up line. Thankfully (in this scenario), Australian phones have little removable chips in them that store all the information. I put it in her phone to see if I had a text message, didn't, and then got the girl's number and went to a pay-phone, where I got more frustrated than ever in my life evar. The phone kept cutting off, not telling me when I ran out of the amazingly-expensive credit. And because our conversation was in a mash of piss-poor Korean and piss-poor English, it took 3 fucking dollars just to meet up. She was in the wrong place, not I, we met up an hour late and she had to go. So I'm teaching tonight. Oh well, I was happy to go home anyway and make a fantastic burrito.
Oh, and the on the ride, we passed this truck. I thought it was cute.

Tongue depressor? more like tongue exciter!

2007-04-17T23:46:00.000-06:00

So, this'll be brief since I wrote a massive entry just before, but yesterday held a nice rite in my metamorphosis from pupael (get it?!) to doctorfly: I did the thing where you ask the patient to open his or her mouth and stick out his or her tongue and go, "Say Ah". Daeya!

When 2% Hungry

2007-04-16T02:04:00.000-06:00

Greetings. I just got back from a fun-filled adventure in the land of morning calm and of my heart: Korea.
I finished up another week of school, as normal, when I left you. Nothing to note well. I ended up not biking to the airport, sadly, but did get a ride to the train station from a friendly sucker at 5am. I landed and walked through the Seoul Incheon Airport wearing a T-shirt with Korean on it, to no one's reading. See, my foreigner friends and I always joked about how Koreans spend 5 hours a day studying English, yet buy and wear T-shirts with the funniest, least-sensical phrases on them. "How can they not spend the 15 seconds to try to decode their apparel?" Well, apparently they just see text as design, since they didn't take the time to read my shirt and it was in their native tongue.
I took the airport bus and got off right by my old house, then walked through my old stomping grounds, Shingal, to meet Hyeshin. It was fucking eerie. It felt like I had left 7 days prior - not 7 months... like my time in Minnie and Australia have been the vacation away from Korea. I don't know how to explain it and I definitely don't understand it, but for some reason I feel such a connexion to that, relatively, plain and unimpressive suburban-city. We met and then went out for a late dinner. This was one of the first of many, many, many meals, assuredly.
I fucking love Korean food. It's so tasty and varied and not expensive and interesting and don't make you feel bad if you eat too much of it. Plus my gf was paying for everything (what a champ), so I had no qualms of devouring every dalk, ddeok, and chigge in sight (chicken, rice cake, and spicy soup, respectively). The next week was a veritable orgy of food. I managed to gain about 6 pounds in the 8 days I was there, all of them done so with a smile on my face and a song in my belly.
Hyeshin and I went to some mountainous area and went hiking and dicking around for a while. Most people, when thinking about Seoul and S.K. think of it as being this concrete wasteland. Some parts of it are yes; oh, god, yes! But they have some great little mountains around there with some vistas that are quite gorgeous. We also spent some time lallygagging and literally dicking around:I also had some nice chances to meet up with some old friends from previous sojourns. Jason, YongJu, and Colleen from previous Koreanizing and Matt from Australia: 1st time. He had nothing to do this year, so I talked him into teaching English in the same program that I did. Unlucky for him, he got stuck in some rural shithole 30k south of North Korea.He's a champ, however and loves it. We had a rip-roaring good time drinking and eating our way around his tiny town. We visited one his favorite restaurants: the aforepictured and title of this post 'When 2% Hungry'. We had such a nice laugh since it is actually a cute name for a restaurant, but with a logic they did just not think through. Why would you go eat if you were only 2% hungry?! Oh man, what a laugh we laughed. We also did what is customary in any night on the town in this country: go to a Noraebong (literally 'song room'). This is the Korean version of the karaoke room and, in my opinion, much better. You get a small room (can comfortably seat 5-10ppl) for something like 10-15$ an hour. There are several tv screens, 2 microphones, and some tambourines and then you just rock out hard core. They have a big book of songs with enough in English to last you a long time. We really took home a couple Guns n Roses songs and kicked the shit out of "Dream on". The best part was that we paid 13$ for an hour when we walked in and immediately found a 1$ bill on the table. We started singing and saw a 10$ bill stuck to the TV screen! Also, the owners kept adding more time on our thing for free so we ended up paying 2$ for 2hours, what a deal!
I left Matt alone in his pisshole and went back to my sweet little town where I got to deal with another big highlight: revisiting Shingal Middle School: the birthplace of my Korea-centricism. It was so nice being back there, seeing all the little cute kids. Most of them whose names I knew initially, I still remembered and I even noticed when kids had different colour glasses or changed their hairstyles - an impressive feat when you had over 750 students (total) who all have the same uniform and hair length and colour. "And their reaction?" you query? Well, let this speak more than blog-words ever could:

It was amazing and awe-(and almost tear)inspiring to see all of them and how excited they were to see me. I asked them all and they assured me that I was a better teacher than their new English teacher.
Everything else was more or less plain, but in a good way. I cooked a nice meal for Hyeshin and her sister and we just spent a lot of time loafing, walking, and eating around. It's really quite strange that I have such an attachment to Korea but I was really fucking sad to leave last night. I haven't had a connection like this to Israel, my birth-country and place of youthful, sunlit summer vacations, nor to Minneapolis, the lake-ridden weather-forgotten formative-yearin' place of my family, nor to Brisbane, the sunburnt semi-tropical environmentally-friendly urbania I lived in once and decided to return to for a long time. I really was loathing leaving as after 10 quick days I felt like I had never left and I was so comfortable and happy with my surroundings that it was scary to leave that strange Asian country. The flight was sad and unspecial and passed quickly (thank you Ambien, pilfered from my gramma) and I landed in Brisbane at 6:45am and it was how I expected it: I was greeted with splendid weather but not with twang of joy and excitement in my soul. As I got off the plane and witnessed Koreans struggling with the language gap, I saw that I was back in my element. And that was no comfort. I took the train right away to school and made it almost on time for my 8am class.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I'll keep this one brief-ish:
- Equalizing your ears: people think that when you yawn or plug your nose and exhale to equalize, you're letting air into your ears, as that's how it feels. In fact, you're letting air out. When you go through a change of pressure (higher), air in your inner ear gets compressed and absorbed into blood; when the pressure drops back down (as in when you're landing in an airplane), the air decompresses and fills up your inner ear. This causes discomfort and by equalizing, you're contracting muscles surrounding a tube that connects the back of the very top of your throat (behind nose) to your ear (the tube is called the tympanicopharyngeal tube if you're curious) causing the tube to open and let air out. This tube is also very important in causing inner ear infections.
- Tattoos: you shed skin all the time, right? So how come tattoos are moreorless permanent and not sloughed off in a month or two? What happens is that when the ink is injected, your innate immunity organisms, called macrophages, come in and treat it like a bacteria or pathogen and eat it. Then they stay in the same place. They are fairly long-living and don't move after eating anything, so they stay there. Eventually they die and other macrophages eat them, in the same place; therefore, the tattoo hardly moves or blurs over time.

Not much whining, though pretty cheesy

2007-03-29T16:53:00.000-06:00

Hello all, I hope you are having a good thing. My time here is going by swimmingly. Surprisingly quick, in fact: I can't believe I'm already approaching week 11 of school and the weeks go faster than the weekends.
I have joined the ultimate frisbee league, sadly shearing the not-so-fine line betwixt playing frisbee for fun and playing it with score-keeping (and you hafta to pay to join, too). But I have finally learned how to throw a flick and maybe one day will be able to hit the 'mo.
Speaking of general health stuff, I've also started swimming a bit more seriously, putting in a mile each time I go (this is also a fiscal thing, however, as it costs me 3.5$ every time I go swim so i must get the most out of it). Also, we had a clinical session where we learned some of the basic vital sign taking techniques and practised on each other. I learned how to use a sphygmometer and got a blood pressure of 120/70, which is delicious. I learned the different areas to take a pulse (61 resting bpm) and how doctors fool you when they are counting your respiratory rate (since if they tell you they're counting your breathing rate, you obviously change your pattern, what they do is hold your wrist against your chest, pretending to be counting your pulse but in fact feeling for the rise of the chest) and go to use a nifty pricking device to measure blood glucose levels. We were showed how to do EEGs but unfortunately didn't get to practice on each other. The most fun was the lung capacity test. It was a hard one, for soothe, but we were all getting very competitive and light headed. Mine was 4.6L, which is alright but should be better. Next time, vitalometer!
Last Friday the housemates all made some homemade pizza (dough, tomato sauce, e'rything) and garlic bread and then watched a movie, delicious. On Saturday I went to the market as usual to get the gorgeous fruits and veggies (mmm, I'm drinking a smoothie right now from fresh watermelon, kiwi, starfruit, and lime) and then afterwards went to see a movie with a guy from my class (out of school friends!). We went to see The Lives of Others, which was really fooking good - I suggest you all see it and pay attention especially to the main character who looks like he was winner of East Berlin's Annual Kevin Spacey Look-a-like Contest! Afterwards the guy and I went to a 'bowling club'. Here bowling = lawn bowling = outside on grass where everyone wheres white. It was nighttime so I didn't get to see what lawn bowling actually is, however the spot was right on the river and had cheap beers and was therefore good.
Sunday I biked in the morning; nothing serious, only 55k since I wanted to study in the afternoon (oh Michael's, how though hast changed! I was home by 11am after having biked 55k, and then went to university to study on a Sunday, with no test in sight). We went up two small mountains and did a bit o' mtnbkng and saw some great views of Brisbane. Also, we went to a huge park where all these boy-men were flying their huge RC airplanes. We waited patiently for a crash but there was none.
This last week went well and fast, but this was because I was very excited for Thursday (yesterday). As I've explained many times, we have small group discussion twice a week, same 9 ppl and a cool doctor-teacher and we all really get along together. So we planned for yesterday's session (noon-2, last class of the day) to be a wine&cheese party. Fan-fucking-tastic. Sitting in our classroom, drinking lots of wine and eating lots of cheese while we discuss the intricate mechanisms of diabetes. It was much more lively than that picture shows, trust me. We hung out for a bit longer in the classroom, and then moved on to a bar and played pool and drank more for a while. This is when people started dicking out, sadly enough. I was all gung-ho on going bowling (either kind) and I thought we had planned on it, but people just kind of phased out. I ended up going to one guy's home and eating dinner and playing poker and then coming back home, happy, though. Who knows what this weekend will bring? There're some parties and other shit but I'll hopefully do some studying. Next week I go to Korea for 10 days and I'm damn-fucking excited. I'm still figuring out if I can bike to the airport with my luggage. We'll see.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
This week's case was on diabetes and we got to learn all about it. I guess an interesting thing that I semi-knew before but not in detail was about the unfortunate condition known as 'diabetic foot'. One problem with diabetes is that due to vascularisation problems, they get neuropathy (neuro= nerves, pathy = disease) where they lost feeling, especially in their feet (since those are the longest nerve fibres). So what happens is that these people can have too tight shoes or step on a nail or melt the bottom of their feet on hot asphalt or just get general cuts and shit. Normally, we would notice this and take care of it and wouldn't have to worry about anything, but since these poor souls cannot feel this stuff, they don't notice any problems and then infection and her god-cousin gangrene set in and then people lose their feet. (It's not just neuropathy, though, since they have some immune problems as well). This can also happen to their eyes, though not through the same mechanism.
What else have I learned? Well, I know now intricately the process of food-energy, with all the storage in between. The reason you shouldn't starve yourself to lose that fat? Because a considerable amount of your protein goes to keep your energy flowing, and not enough of your fat. Also, a biochem textbook stated that an average person can last 90 days without eating but an obese person can survive up to a year (!) without eating. Where's the fun in that?

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

2007-03-20T04:33:00.000-06:00

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.

can't be bothered

2007-03-12T03:56:00.000-06:00

Hello all. I know it's been a long time since I last rapped at ya, but this was not capricious. Nay, it's because nothing that much has really happened. I last left you with a tummyache and that continued through the rest of the week and to the weekend. As a result, I didn't do much besides watching movies. I guess I will just present it to you the only way I know how:
HIGHLIGHTS
- My last week went by well and good. Classes were fine as we learned about peptic ulcers. I'll save my knowledge for jidkt (see below). We went to the hospital again to practice our history-taking and physical-examining. It was fun playing doctor with the stethoscope and poking and prodding into these poor guys' bodies and minds. I also went swimming, lap, for the first time in 2 months.
- On Friday after class I went to a park with some people where we had a beer and sausage sizzle (no, the beer wasn't sizzling). It was a gorgeous day and one of the guys had a puppy with whom we played. It was nice. I biked home, hung out and ate. That night I went to a party that was literally down the block. How could I not? I could hear the noise from my house. Well, it was a shit show. By late night, there was mud and broken glass all over the house. I, not once but twice, rescued people after they had fallen down stairs. I was relatively proud of myself, actually, as my instinct after seeing someone falling (as opposed to laughing, which came later) was to rush and make sure they were okay (they were). I saw a guy puking out the window; a fight almost broke out. Man, it was like any other party, t'was.
- I was biking, approaching a skeezy intersection where on one-side, bikers are coming down a hill with a sharp turn onto a sidewalk. At the junction there's a big pole in the middle. I was biking the non-hill way and saw a guy coming down the hill so I readied myself. He didn't. He turned onto the sidewalk and saw me and instantly slammed on his brakes. Only, he was a n00b and so slammed on his front brake and flew over his handlebars. I bequeathed 1 precious liter of cold water to cleaning off the blood of his wounds. (Lesson: get in the habit of using your rear brakes as often as possible so when an emergent situation...emerges... you slam on the rear one and do not fly over your handlebars).
- Speaking of biking, yesterday I biked to Redcliffe, a sleepy beach town ~60k NE of here. It was a really nice ride...there. We went through some cool wetlands and plains and the ocean was gorgeous. We left here around 6:30AM and got there before 11AM. We ate some shit and took a siesta and then, as there was nothing to do in shitey Redcliffe, turned around and headed back. See, this may logically make sense but you, the layman, are not aware of the system of weather. The reason one leaves balls-early is for great weather. It was a cloudless day and by the time we headed back, it got damn hot. We stopped ever 30min to re-apply sunscreen and drink lots of water. It was so fucking hot, man. I got home at 2:30pm (total distance 125k) and took the coldest shower money could buy. I then drank an icy gin'n'tonic and watched Casino. I learned today that the time we were biking back, particularly at 1pm when we were on a flat, asphalt path that went for many klicks without shade, it had reached 37°. That's body temperature for those unfamiliar with physiology. - I made eggplant parmesan, marking the first time I've ever cooked eggplant or cooked a thing in an oven.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
We learned about a little cutie-pie known as Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria recently discovered to cause peptic ulcers. In fact, 70% of stomach ulcers and 90% of duodenal ulcers are caused by these little guys. Why does this matter? Because it's main mode of transmission is oral-oral (meaning kissing, yes, but also sharing food, drinks, etc) and its prevalence in Korea is higher than 80% - that means that I definitely have these little guys in my stomach! How am I so sure? 'Cuz I must have taken bites out of 100 different students' food, not to mention all the shared soups, stews, and shot glasses that get passed around at any Korean dinner. The good news is that any of you whom I've shared food, drinks, or other oral substances with since coming back from Korea most likely have it too! Kyle and Joel, you guys have it for sho'.
Some more information I learned that's cool for you guys...hmm. Laxatives work almost exactly the same as lactose-intolerance works. Lactose is a common sugar, however some people lack the enzyme (cleverly named lactase) to break it down to glucose, so it moves into the large colon where bacteria feed on it (which causes gas) and it changes the osmotic gradient in the intestine, thus sucking water back into the intestine, causing diarrhoea! What else works like this? Why, diet soda! (Also, remember the short-lived Olean?) Always wondered why it tasted sweet but didn't give you any of those Evil Calories? It's because it obviously contains sugar (it tastes sweet) but it's a sugar that you don't break down, you don't absorb, and you don't gain calories. Therefore, it should give you diarrhoea, except it's in small concentration and is given in a form that has a lot of water and other electrolytes and so doesn't usually cause diarrhoea. Also, one more thing that works in this way is the magical fruit, itself. Yes, beans have some shit in it that your body doesn't digest and so it moves to large intestine. It's not big enough to cause diarrhoea, usually, but it's hugely nutrient-rich and bacteria love the shit, so they eat it up and release hydrogen and methane as part of their metabolizing, causing you to have flatus.
This reminds me (sorry, one more) of something I read in the physiology textbook. You have hydrogen and methane, both powerful little gases. When exposed to air, it mixes with oxygen (highly flammable) and that's why you can light them on fire, right? Well, in surgery of the large intestine, oxygen enters the picture as the bowel is exposed to air. In some surgeries, they use a cauterizing iron to fuse tissue and whatnot. This has a spark in it and you can get some minor explosions in surgery! Howabout that?

Of Biking and TummyAcheing

2007-02-28T01:46:00.000-06:00

After the craziness of Sports Day, I took a day off to recover. I woke up not late, ate a big breakky, took a walk and hung out. I went to school and studied alone for 3 hours straight! It truly was an image for skeptical eyes: me in the corner of our classroom, 4 large textbooks splayed out before me, and on the whiteboard, a huge, quadcolor drawing of the front and back of the liver with all its connecting things. Yes, it was something to make even your mother proud. Came home, at a simple dinner and watched Boogie Nights (good movie, right so). Then I went to sleep early because the next morn' I was waking up early for... bike trip!

I left my house at 6:45AM, rainy Sunday, and biked a bit and met a friend. By then it was already sunny and dry: an onus indeed as I ended up with the BikerBurn (sunburn on tops of hands and feet(sandals), arms, nose, and awesome sunglasses-tanline) Then he and I spent the next several hours biking until we reached the Gold Coast: miles and miles of splendorous beach. We stopped every 40 minutes or so to rehydrate and eat (I figured we were burning at least 1000 calories an hour... yes, there's an equation: 0.28calories/pound/mile) We got there at about 12:15PM (nice 4.5hours) and immediately jumped in the ocean. We just sat, cooling off and breathing easy for about 30 minutes and then went in search of food. Somehow, it took us longer than we thought to find a food place so we settled for a strip mall: him, Subway, and me, a pizza chain. I got a large (admittedly, smaller than a 'Merican Large) with a shitload of toppings and polished it off with ease. We then went to another beach with huge waves and jumped around for a while. At around 3:30 we hopped back on the bikes and headed for the local train station. We definitely did not have it in us to bike home: don't let the scale on the Gmap scale delude you, it was much farther than shown. I just put in the basic route but the other guy had a GPS that kept track of our biking: it'd been about 100k just to the beach, come'on now! We get to the train, catch it right on time and jump on. There are a couple mid-teenagers getting completely interrogated by the 4 (!) train-ticket-checkers. It was really weird: they spent like 15 minutes calling, doing background info, isolating the kids to ask them questions...and after all that we didn't see them doing anything to them. Also, they didn't check anyone else's ticket. After a while the railway died so we were put on a bus to a different train station. By that point, I was only 20minute bike-ride from home and didn't want to jump back on the train, so I just went home. All together, ~130K. Good on me. The most surprising thing and I guess indicative of my mad-awesomeness is that the next morning, I hopped on the bike and my ass didn't hurt and my legs weren't sore.
The week so far has been alright. Classes and classes. Yesterday we had our first clinical session with a patient. We got a psychiatric patient (just happened to be that since our clinical coach is a psychiatrist) and then just drilled him with medical questions to beef up our history-taking skillz. We then did a physical examination of his abdomen. Pretty sweet stuff. Afterwards, all of us in my group went out for a long, nice dinner at a Turkish restaurant. Last night, maybe the Turkish food or the weird meat pies we got during our clinical coaching, but I had a really weird tummyache (medical terminology). I had countless dreams about trying to solve the problem and they were all fruitless. Today we had another anatomy lab and got to watch a stomach and GI tract be excised and played around with it. All the while, I was rubbing my own abdomen, empathizing. Good stuff.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I haven't done this for a while, sorry. One interesting thing that I definitely didn't know I learned while practicing physical examination on myself: I have a third nipple! Howabout that? Your good friend Michael has a supernumeray.
Other than that, learned a lot of interesting and gross stuff about protozoan and worm infections and tons about diarrhoea (defined as over 250g/24hr period). If you get diarrhoea, an easy home-rehydration-remedy is: 1/2tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 8oz. orange juice, and dilute it with water to a liter. Drink! Mmm- tasty and good for you.

Sports Daze

2007-02-23T19:45:00.000-06:00

This best describes the day that was Sports Day... going from this:to this:

If you may recall from a previous post, this is a day where everyone dresses in scrubs, doesn't go to school, and gets shitfaced. It was a crazy day; it's wholeness only able to be described in timeline form:
Friday
9:30AM - I biked over to school, locked my bike in our classroom and then met several people from my group. They were at someone's car, drinking. Everyone had a couple drinks, chatting and whatnot. We were just getting started, expressing our eagerness for the rest of the day and it started pouring hard. We ran and took cover under the newly built Green Bridge (in literature, this is called 'foreshadowing'...so hint: read about the dimensions) and waited for one of the guys' friends to pick us up and drive us to the bar where everyone was meeting. Meanwhile it's stopped raining and the rest of the day is gorgeous weather.
The guy shows up in a pretty small car and, excluding him, there were 6 of us. So one guy gets in shotgun, three of us in back with one girl laying across us, and then one guy in the trunk. This was not a station-wagon or SUV, this was a small sedan and so the trunk was a real-true trunk that he was stuck in. These reason they were doing this was because apparently it's a big deal and cops pull you over for having too many people in the car. Meanwhile, each person (besides the driver) was drinking out of a can or bottle of something or other. Apparently open-container laws aren't as big a deal here...
10:30 AM- we arrive at the bar/restaurant and it is packed. Everyone is dolled up in various scrubbage and the drinking is well under way. Everyone here is 1st years, as the event entails different classes running to different posts and this bar being the 2nd-to-late leg before the run to school. A bunch of us sit down for breakfast. I had a Breakky Burger and a screwdriver. Quickly followed by a beer that was pilfered from under the tap, collecting the dripping head or whatever. Breakfast takes a nice-long time with people coming and going, drinking and eating. After a while, a waiter starts passing around bills to the tables. We've had at least 10 people sitting and eating at our table and hardly know ourselves who needs to pay. So we (I) decide that as this bar is going to make an unbelievable amount of money today (we were slated to return in the evening) we don't need to pay the bill (90$). We hide the bill and scatter around the bar. I walk around, drinking, mingling and whatnot. It is funny watching everyone in their scrubs. I happen to look over and see the waiter talking to 2 of the girls in my group, both of which are holding out 10$ bills. I immediately come over to assess the situation. Apparently the waiter wants money from everyone at our table. The girls were trying to tell him that it'd be impossible to find everyone and are trying to pay their portion; the waiter says he needs the whole bill. I intercept and say, "Howabout we just don't pay anything?" and he has a noncommittal shrug. I thank him and pull the girls away.
At this point, the older students are trickling in, sweaty and wasted, from their run to the bar. We decide it's about time for us to head over to school.
12:30PM- It's about 2.5km to the school and most of the people want to walk. I convince one girl in my group (by 'my group', I mean the 9-people discussion class that I see and hang out with often; we all get along very well) to run with me and so we do it. It was really fun, actually, and we got a lot of honks and waves from people. It was pretty strange seeing so many people in scrubs taking over little Brisbane. We get to the area where we are slated to have festivities and it is madness. An area about the size of a soccer field is roped off with some security guards; inside there is a mass of about 400 people in scrubs, a jumping castle, a tug-of-war rope, a jelly pool, 3 barbecues going with sausages and onions (all Aussies eat) and about 6 giant coolers with cans of beer, rum&coke, and vodka&lime (they sell these commonly in can form here). I am excited. I roam around, mingle, drink, and repeat. A frolic on the jumping castle sends one person into my hand, temporarily breaking my watch (I fixed it) and cutting my hand. The beverages and food were to be purchased with tickets. Naturally, I figured that as there were 400+ people, all drunk and wearing scrubs with shitty pockets, I would find tickets on the ground with no problem. About 10 seconds after I started looking, I found enough to get me several things. So we just hung around for a while, it was all going nice.
3:30 PM - One of the guys from my group comes up and asks if anyone wants to jump off the Green Bridge. "Well, sure," says I, "as long as someone jumps first so I can tell that it's deep enough." He runs away to gather more people and after doing so, we head over there. To be honest, I wasn't that nervous even though it was the highest thing I've ever jumped off without a bungee cord. I waited and saw a couple people jump and survive. I climbed over the guard rail and just went right for it. Doesn't sound extreme, take a gander:

Cool enough for you? To be honest, I don't even remember the jump, which is pretty annoying. I was drinking but not that drunk (i.e. I would have done it stone-cold sober) but didn't feel any of the fun. All I remember is re-surfacing and surprise at how salty the river was. About 10 guys in total did it and as we were climbing out security was saying that we shouldn't do that again as there are mud sharks in the river (this is true; apparently they are responsible for the 2nd most human fatalities after Great Whites.)
Afterwards, we had back to the field and relax and hang out for a while longer. Dusk settles in and most people are heading back towards that damn bar.
7:00 PM - We head over on the CityCat (the beautiful public transport on the river) to go to the bar. It's quite a site: 50+ people in scrubs on the ferry. We get to the bar and its the same old: drinking, chatting, and whatnot. Blah blah blah, people end up going swimming again and then I end up walking home (at 10:30 PM) and eating a big bowl of soup.
This is probably getting boring for you because it is for me. So I guess I will just leave you with this summary: it was a fun and crazy day. I must have had at least 20 but most likely more alcoholic beverages, yet at no point was 'literally drunk'. It was definitely something I'm looking forward to. In another year.

A day in the life...

2007-02-20T05:39:00.000-06:00

No, this blog will not be dedicated to glotter (though that mensch surely deserves one), but just the capitulation of one interesting day. But I will get back to it later (ha! you thought it'd be that easy?)
Saturday evening I went to a BBQ party at a kid's house. There were a ton of people there, doing what people do at parties: drinking, talking, and drinking. It was actually pretty nice and I was there for about 6 hours, meeting my cohorts. I am constantly amazed (and will be so for the next 4 years, probabli) at how not-douchy these people are. Seriously. Everyone I meet is intelligent and nice and interesting and cool and it's so disconcerting. Here is an actual picture of what the people look like (I'm in there, too, if you can find me...):I know what they look like. But they aren't like that! Maybe this would stop me from being so judgmental... but that's not happening.
Sunday I woke up and cleaned our nasty kitchen. It makes me so frustrated, this kitchen it does. I washed 2 sinks full of dishes and cleaned the counter tops of all this nasty gunk that accumulated. I even cleaned the stove top. I don't understand how it gets that way - that is, I understand how, I just don't understand that thinking pattern that leads to it. I left to go play Frisbee for like 3 glorious hours. I am definitely in bottom 10% of the players (thank god for female athletes!) there but I still had a lot of fun. I got back home to see that the kitchen had resumed its normal state. I then watched Stranger than Fiction, which I have to admit that I liked. I normally detest Will Ferrell, but he did a good job and I would have given this movie an 8 or even 9/10 if it wasn't for the ending.
My Monday was full of class and was not bad or special or anything.
Today was pretty interesting. I cycled to Uni at 8:45 to meet 3 members of my group to head off to a hospital for our first Clinical Coaching Session. Sweet As! 5 weeks in and they already let us go to the hospital. We had to dress up to play the part, which I am loath to do usually and, as such, do not do with aplomb, skill, or handsomeness. I also do not know how to tie a tie and so I needed one of my friends to help me. We get there and they tell us a bunch of stuff we need to know about the hospital itself and then we get a 15 minute, interactive session on how to wash our hands. Wow. Then they set us loose on the patients.
"Just go up and start talking to them," they instruct us. Easier said than done. The first one (an obese woman in a wheelchair) I talk to was an eye-opener:
"Hello, my name is Michael. I'm a medical student. I was wondering if I could talk to you a little?"
"Sure"
"So how are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm not a patient. I'm just in this wheelchair because I fell 2 years ago and cannot walk. I am here because my son has cerebral palsy and is going to have an operation soon to get a peg implanted."
"Oh... er.... uh... how are you finding this hospital?" (I don't know what I'm doing, obviously)
"Oh, yeah, it's really bad. My daughter who used to be a registered nurse is in there giving him a bath right now since the nurses here do a bad job. I'd go in and help but there isn't enough room for all his equipment and me in the chair."
Jesus.
It goes on for a while: the troubles of raising her child; her own troubles; how this man (he's now 49 and completely dependent) functions, etc. She is pretty emotional and teary-eyed the whole time.
It's good to experience this stuff because it is obviously what I will be facing for the rest of my life: no one goes to the hospital when they're healthy and happy. It was still a bit of an eye-opener.
Afterwards, we learned how the beds work and other functional stuff around the hospital and then were released. Our next task was to go to a different hospital for our small-group clinical somethingorother. 5 of us went to a private psychiatric hospital to meet our doctor. We had some time before it started and so explored. This place was nice as balls since it was private and we were impressed. It had a cafeteria with full buffet that was free (!) for volunteers and cheap for workers. We are not getting paid and are official, ergo we are volunteers, no? We went to go talk to the cashier and I told her how we're medical students but we're volunteering at the hospital. She seemed ready to let us eat when one of the guys in my group said, "well, we're not sure if we can do this. Would you like us to go and ask Administration?" (the fucker) and so we left, empty stomached. We didn't know where administration was and didn't have enough time to walk around so we settled for our packed lunches.
We got to our Doctor's office and introduced ourselves. We were pleasantly told that we were having catered lunch (and would be with every weekly visit! Blickets!) and so spent about 40 minutes munching away on sandwiches, meat pies, and asking this guy all sorts of questions about mental health issues. It was really interesting and he had some cool stories. We then talk for a while about how to take a patient's history and how to give a physical gastrointestinal examination. Good stuff. After our 3 hour session, several of us went to yet another hospital to self-study and meet up with a group to do more study. The 2 hrs spent in the library went well because about 45 minutes were spent chatting and another 45 minutes were spent Scrub-Scrounging. This Friday is, what is called, the Biggest Med Event of the Season. Everyone in the medical school (about 1200 people) run from a certain point all the way to the university on a busy street... dressed in scrubs. We then get to the University (around noon) and spend the next 6 hours eating, drinking, and engaging in sports things that range from Jumping Castles, tug-of-war, Frisbee, jello-wrestling, etc. Afterwards people go to the bars, still in their scrubs. Those who know me know that I'm not usually big on huge-group-doing-things, but that sounds damn awesome. Because there are so many med students and so few hospitals, around this week all hospitals are on HiAlert for scrub thievery (though I personally think they aren't that far against it and order more). We staked some territory, did some swooping and swipping and other things that sound like that and stole a bunch. I got a cool button-down scrubs shirt that I didn't even know could exist. I will post pictures of the revelry later but I am fairly excited.
At this stage there were about 6 of us. These are people in my small-discussion groups so we've gotten to know each other pretty well and all get along. We met up with 5 other people and 3 2nd year med students and had a 2.5hr group study session. Sounds horrible, I know, but it was good because they told us what we need to know and don't need to know and helped alleviate our fears as well as gain our knowledge. After the session, 3 of us walked back to the university on this nice bridge over the river. The sun was setting and the sky was a gorgeous pink. There was a single big dark cloud in a picturesque location; above it, there were dark cloud rays (straight, narrow clouds, I guess) shooting out towards the sunset over a tiny sliver of a moon. It was really quite beautiful. We were talking about how despite the fact we had such a long and hectic day, it was actually quite good.
I finally got back to pick up my bike at around 6:45pm (that's a 10hour day, for you) and went to group room at the university to drop off my shoes and change to street clothes. I stopped by our kitchen and opened the fridge, seeking cookies that someone brought a week ago, and saw a huge plate of leftover chicken wings from the conference going on in the next room. Before my synapses had a chance to query my frontal lobe on the choices I had and their ethical value, I had already eaten one and grabbed a second one. Delicious. I got home tired but content. Ate a dinner, watched a Sports Night, and did a dance.
Good night.

Another Reinberg?

2007-02-16T21:41:00.000-06:00

Yes it's true: I am now older brother to another Reinberg, 22 years my Junior. Say 'Hello' to Ben Reinberg. It's really weird, I know. I won't meet the little guy for a while, but I can happily say his APGAR score was 10, and this was something I just learned about in school.
Other than that, I guess not much more bigger news can be. Yesterday we had a BBQ with the housemates+1. It was a nice affair. We went down to the local park that has BBQs stocked with wood (god bless Aus). It then took the 5 of us about 45 minutes to get the fucker started. You'd think the countless hours I spent watching Survivorman and Man vs Wild would have taught me something, that I would have absorbed some sort of fire-building knowledge but even with the help of newspaper and matches it still took too long to do. Oh well. Once we got the baby going it was hot as balls; I ate my first true meat of the last month and it was fine though not earth-shattering. Post-prandial, we watched Epic Movie and it was hard to put into words how bad it was. It was really just bad. Scary Movie and Not Another Teen Movie were bad but somewhat watchable - this was just excruciating. I don't know if I laughed once with it.
This morning I woke up, talked to my family and heard the news. I then went to my cute little market and bought a lot of shit. I got a gigantic bunch of Basil for ~1$ and am excited to make some pesto later on. Later today there's a BBQ party somewhere (aussies really like their barbies) and so I will be going to that.
Take it easy and well.

such and such

2007-02-15T07:10:00.001-06:00

Hey all. Not much news... the week has been going fine. Today I had 8am-5pm non-break class, but it's alright cuz I had 45 lectures on antibodies and I think I understand how they work! Woo woo. In sadder news, I came in 3rd place in our (now weekly) poker game and, as such, didn't make any monies. Next week is something else. I've been reading a pretty cool/interesting thing. It's called Tales of Future Past and what it does is exhibit articles about the future, written many decades ago. It's actually kind of interesting and the writer is pretty funny. It's thorough so don't think you can just spend a couple minutes on it. But if you do, check out Future Living.
As far as
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I can, with some pride, say that I actually understand this picture! I definitely didn't know that... but that's not so interesting for you, my plebeian reader. As far as things that are cool to know... hmmm. So you know that cells generate antibodies (thing that fights antigen) when they encounter an antigen (bad thing.. bacteria, etc.). But did you know that one B cell, after it meets its antigen (there are ~10^16 B cells with DIFFERENT specificities to bad guys...they are all floating around, waiting for the antigen that meets its receptor to come in. So if you think about it, it's like if I was standing on a freeway with a car key, along with millions of other dudes with other car keys, and waiting while millions of cars drove by and, essentially, seeing if they fit in every single car, while they were still driving, and then I somehow find the right car for the key... simplistic analogy but makes ya think), can produce up to 100,000,000 same cells against that one antigen...in 1 hour!!! Think of the numbers, people. The numbers! It's actually mindnumbing if you think about it.
And so, I leave you with:

Coming out

2007-02-12T05:32:00.000-06:00

So all, a simple post for the time being. My weekend proved to be nothing special. Friday night I stayed in, watched Children of Men, which proved to be pretty decent. I'll spare my philosophical comments and such. On Saturday I returned to the market (I believe I shall be doing thus each Saturday) and met up with my friend Justus. Man, this climate is so great, check this shit out:This is the stuff that I bought: a bag of like 10 plums, 5 apricots, 6 kiwis, 3 tomatoes, 4 carrots, 1 cucumber, and 1 avocado for ~4US$!!! Howabout that shit. That bunch of cilantro you see there cost me an extra 1.50, so I didn't want to group it in. I was pretty pleased. We went back to his house (my old house) and made a very fine brunch and then vegged out for while. Speaking of vegging out/my above picture, I have some information that might be a bit shocking to those who know me: I have become, more or less, vegetarian. This is not reflection of views on meat or animal treatment or anything. I have eaten a bit of meat a couple times in the last 4 weeks, but I am more a practical vegetarian. It started out that when I was initially buying my groceries in the Big Grocery Store, I decided to hold off til the butcher shop to get my meat. I waited several days, went to the butcher's, it was closed, and then from then on I just didn't buy any meat. My reasoning for not eating (any significant amount of) meat breaks down like this: 27% money, 30% health, 8% to see if I can do it, and the rest to a word best said in Korean: 그냥 (pronounced 'kun-yang'; translates to "for no reason" "just because" "as it is" etc.) Now, I know what you're thinking: Old Michael sold out, right? Well let me tell you something; I love meat. I LOVE it. But not as much as I love... something.

Anyway... after our meal, we went to that one fake beach that I love so much, had a bit of a swim, a pint or two of beer and then I biked back, racing ahead of inclement weather. I spent the night in.
Sunday I biked to Mt. Coot-tha (a local mountain) for a med school BBQ. It blew. I left and biked to some other university to play ultimate frisbee for several hours and then came back home, exhausted. As I've mentioned, this city is really fooking hilly. Especially when you bike up Mt. Coot-tha. So I was going on over 4 hours of non-stop target-heart-rate action. Holla at your boy.
Today was Monday. I arrived late to class as my alarm didn't go off; however, I was pretty proud of myself as I woke up at 8:13, dressed, brushed teeth, peed, grabbed fruit, took bike out of garage, biked over 1.5 miles, locked up the bike, walked up 5 flights of stairs, and was sitting in my chair by 8:30. That's damn impressive and you know it. You know you do! Anyway class was fine - learning a lot of immunology stuff which I'm a bit shaky on. That's all.

Social Acumen or, at least, acuman

2007-02-09T06:22:00.000-06:00

Hello. Since our paths last crossed and then untwisted, I've been quite a busy bee. Lots of classes, of course, but also inklings of a social life. The idea of Michael making friends is like low voter turnout: inevitable but you are always surprised. On Wednesday evening I invited over several people (and guests) that I had met over various happenstances to play some Texas Hold 'em. I had intended a friendly and social evening and fiscal outcomes were the furthest thing away from my mind. We set the buy-in at 5$ (AUD) and proceeded to just chat and laugh and raise all-in, slowly but surely, over the next 3 hours. The fact that I won was quite a pleasant and unexpected bonus but regardless I had a good time. I met a guy who actually lives in the town (pop. 11,000) where my dad bought his house (previously), so that was a coincidence.
Last night (Thursday) a gentleman took it upon himself to invite the 400 people in our class over to his house for a party. He had a huge, great deck that overlooked a small park. I only made it there by 5:30 (I was on a long mission to get a free printer. Long story short (ironically, this might be the interesting story of the blog) I got there and back on 4 buses; twas free using expired bus cards, wandered around after getting off at the end-of-the-line, not knowing most of the streets I needed to get to this house, besides for their tiny street. And I knew it was by a pool and I could picture the map.) expecting it to be dead (as the party started at 2pm after class) but it was far from. I spent the evening talking to a lot of people (no, all 400 didn't come. At most it was 60 at a time, with a constant ebb and flow), most whom I'd never seen before, and always impressed by the individuals I met. I may have touched on this before, but it's a pretty uncanny and unique experience to be at a large gathering of people who look like typical drunk douchers, but are in fact ALL intelligent and, in most cases, well-rounded, well-traveled, interesting, and cool. It's almost creepy. There was generous, in all senses of the word, boozing going on. The host collected donations to order pizza and about 45 minutes later, 20 large Domino's pizzas arrived (Domino's being the only pizza chain round here and large being same or even smaller than 'Merican medium) and they were completely consumed within 5 minutes.
Anyway, today was a regular-kind-of day, lots of lectures and whatnot and then reading at the park and internetting away. Usual Friday night for me.
Things in the house are going semi-alright. I'm getting a bit discouraged by the messiness of my housemates. I think they haven't really lived alone -ever- and so are not used to being considerate. In short, I end up washing a lot of dishes and cleaning the stoves and counters and picking up garbage, literally, off the floor. One night it was so gross that I lost my appetite upon entering the kitchen and proceeded to not eat dinner as opposed to doing the usual amount of cooking, with flourish, that I love to do. Also, today my roommate's IceCream tub exploded (?) in the freezer, all over everyone's stuff. He didn't seem to mind, though, so we now have ice cream everywhere.
Also, to add little (but many) insults to injury, we have a serious antfestation 'round here. It's pretty nasty as there are literally hundreds and some will crawl on your feet as your chopping your veggies.
Anyway
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Not too much is known about the mysterious hormones known as pheromones, but we do know that they're important - more so than we consciously realize. For instance, if a bunch of babies are given the same outfit and then all the outfits are placed in a pile together, a mother will be able, without difficulty, to recognize her baby's scent in the clothes. Note: do not confuse pheromone smell with body odor; these are completely different. (Body odor is actually caused by bacteria eating the stuff that comes out of certain glands around your body. This stuff is odorless and it's the dying bacteria that give us the smell)
A more interesting case is when studying attractiveness with relation to smell. When participants are asked to choose or rank (no pun intended) clothes on a basis of olfactory-attractiveness, they will usually (subconsciously) pick ones that present chemicals indicative of being "different" from their own as opposed to the ones that smell like themselves or their family. This is evolutionarily based on the fact that when we're choosing partners, we want ones with different immune systems (antibodies and whatnot) from our own so our progeny will have the largest combination of antibodies and bet skillz for survival! Cool, huh?

Step into the light

2007-02-06T03:23:00.000-06:00

Take your seats. We may begin.
When we last parted, despite it being sweet sorrow I moved on, I was preening myself for my man-date. Friday night I watched Click (wow) and went to sleep. In the morning, I did my usual weekend-rounds of calling the family (as a result of class schedule and the rotation of the earth, weekend mornings are the only time I can call the States) and then biked out to my old neighborhood of West End for the farmers' market. My oh my what a market it was. It was much bigger than two years ago, hopping with people, organic produce, and hippies. I was drooling and, shortly after, so was my wallet. I filled up my backpack to the point of no return while reminiscing with my long-lost hiking-partner Justus. We went back to his house with his girlfriend, made a nice healthy lunch, chatted about old times, chilled in the garden, and juggled. I was able to juggle 3 balls for 5 consecutive rotations, a personal best by far.
We then set out, veggie and fruit-laden, for his girlfriend's house via bicycle. The ride was pleasant enough; we stopped to get some Passion Pop. This triumphant end-product of Australian Innovation (Ausovation) is a cheap, fruity champagne that gets the job done. We each grab a bottle and head to her house. "Why?" the astute reader asks, "surely Michael doesn't like being the 3rd wheel, regardless of the vehicle."
"Oh precious reader," I respond, "it's because this Irish-Italian-British lass (who's spent most of her life in the Caribbean and Tanzania) has a pool!"
It was a gloryhole of a late summer afternoon: sitting by the pool, legs lazily dangling in the water, drinking our fruity libations. At 6 we made to depart.
Warning: this is where I poetically wax.
I don't know what it is about Brisbane, but something about it makes me poetic, or inspired, or poetically inspired, or inspirationally poetic. Anyway you splice it, I often stop and shake myself and ask, "how can this place be so fucking pretty?" and I get to feeling a little romantic. Not 'tacky romantic' but 'Romanticism romantic'.
My bike home was sublime. The requisite amount of alcohol sluicing through my body. The wind rushing past my body. The downy warmth of the slowly-setting sun making me relish the fact that I have efferent nerves. And the Light. I capitalize it for importance.
There's just something about the Light here in Brisbane; between 5:15 and 6:15, this strong-yet-soft, soft-yet-bright, bright-yet-painless ether seems to clarify everything, give everything a saline rinse, highlight inner quality... I do not know and I certainly cannot convey it. Much like Jodie Foster's character in Contact, I feel that they should have sent a poet to describe this Light.
I got that out of my system. But I was being serious and not trying to show-off or anything, I really do feel this stuff, yo. So anyway, Saturday evening I went out with some friends from school, taking the CityCat (water-bus system on the river) to the bar. What a way to transport, let me tell you. Dark river, full moon overhead... I'll stop myself. The bar was nice, the atmosphere was pleasant, and the time-had-by-all was good.
Sunday I biked around for quite a while. This city is amazingly hilly which has its pros and cons. Pros are, of course, the downhills. Never underestimate the downhills.
My first couple days of the week have been fine. Yesterday had classes all day - uneventful. Today I only had one class (at 8) so I was productive the rest of the day: went into the city with a friend and she and I did immigration stuff, bank stuff, food stuff, and beach stuff. So far, so good.
Jesus, I didn't know that !1
This one might be a cop-out. As we all know, macrophages eat invading bacteria and other stuff. They spot these little guys by a process of chemotaxis (chemo = chemical, taxis = yellow cab), i.e. it picks up chemical signals and moves in that direction. Well, we got to see a movie of this happening and it was awesome. The bacteria has its own chemotaxis that it uses to flee, and it really looked like a huge monster was chasing after some little guy. And then it ate it. All it was missing was sound effects.

Ringing in the new moon

2007-02-02T06:51:00.000-06:00

So the delightful month of February is upon us and, In Brisbane at least, rainy days are at hand.
The last two days have passed well enough. I've made my first actual-hang-out friend, first plans for a poker game (oh wait, second. I'll still keep that in there), first impressed-a-teacher, and seen some nasty pictures.
The definitive highlight, however, was purchasing a bike. Finally.
For those of you who know, or who don't, I love biking. It's the most efficient form of transportation and easiest form of exercise. Plus I was getting a bit tired of the 27 minute sun-walk to class each day. Now it's 5 minutes. Anyway, this bike is really nice, much nicer than the one I would get or meant to get. Long story put short: I tried a bike and liked it; they didn't have my size so ordered one with a deposit; bike didn't arrive at beginning of week; at middle of week they found out that bike wouldn't come for another 2-3weeks; they gave me a 100$-more-expensive (that's 80$US) bike for same price. I'm happy - it's fast and light.
To celebrate I rode around the last couple days, tireless pedaling away at the inordinately hilly city, trying to maintain left-side-of-the-road status, and almost getting nailed by a bus. Twice. Good times.
Whilst celebrating my new found vehicular freedom, I cycled my way to the house I used to live in 2 years ago, in attempt to rekindle a lost relationship with Justus. See, Justus was the son of my landlord (she lived in the house) and he lived with us for several weeks. After the semester finished, he and I did the Tasmanian Overland Track: a week of strenuous hiking, amazing scenery and wildlife, and 24-hour being-togetherness (for a more detailed account, click). The most amazing thing was that this was such an experience for me - one of the coolest and most fun and important things I've ever done. And we never spoke again. Not a byte of email. I think this is impressive. So I went to see him (incidentally, I walked there last week; he wasn't home, I left a note with my email address and he didn't write. That fuck) and try to hang out. He wasn't there and I was about to leave when he showed up. Huzzah! Very surreal to meet. We only chatted for a bit because it was darkening and I had to bike back, but we set plans for a man-date tomorrow afternoon and it'll be great to finally talk to someone about this trip who did it with me.
Anyway, school stuff is going fine. We saw some pictures of some infections I would not wish upon my least best friend in microbiology today. I will not post them but feel free to look at leishmania, congenital herpes, kala azar (not for the weak), and, of course, the wonderful world of tapeworms (safe to click). This brings me right on schedule to...
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
If someone you know... know very well... as a large intestinal tape worm, this is how you get them out: get the person to lie, bottomless, face-down on the bed. At exactly the same time every day, for 7 days, place a small piece of raw meat at his or her anus. On the 8th day do not place the meat but be ready. The little guy will poke his head out looking for the meat, at which point you grab him and yank him the fuck out of there. (!) You should have seen/heard/felt the simultaneous groan/shiver of the 400 students in the lecture hall when the professor was, in good storytelling mode, explaining that one.

...and begin

2007-01-30T03:04:00.000-06:00

Hey all. It's been a while since I last rapped at you. I find that I'm busy these days. And when I'm not busy, I'm tipsy. Or lazy. Either way, they are poor excuses so let us all be caught up.
The weekend went by well enough. On Saturday night I went out to a bar (in fact, the same bar whence I found the pictures of an average Australian "douchy bar crowd, as I knew that bar is wont for douchers) with my roomate and several other medicalized students. I managed to get in with sandals, which was considered to be a silent and esteemed accomplishment by me and mine. When I got there, I was introduced to a group of people and promptly asked where I was from.
"That states," I responded
"Whereabouts?" they asked. I went into my by-rote-answer that I've had to develop over the past years of meeting many non-'Mericans (cuz they don't know where the states are and why should they? Who knows where Queensland is?)
My usual routine is along the lines of "I'm from Minnesota. It's in the North and middle; near Chicago; borders Canada," and I'll possibly use my hand or other flat surface to indicate.
So I picked up a coaster, ready to give my soliloquy, and as I'm indicating the middle-upper part, a girl chimes in her 'stralian lilt, "Minnesota?"
I look around, expecting to see cameras for "Candid Camera, Mate" but, as I see none, express my surprise. She mentions how she lived in Rochester (of all places). Her friends proceed to tell me to guess where she's from. I obviously have no idea, as I cannot distinguish between US and Canada or Australia/NZ/UK, let alone within the states of Aus. Nevertheless, I'm a bullshitter, and so I ask her to recite the phrase, "the slick fox jumped over the brown sheep". She did. I said, "Hobart?" (the capital of the lowly-populated island-state Tasmania, south of Aus, whose denizens are stereotyped as being inbred-hicks) at which point it was everyone else's turn to be impressed. She says, "No, but that's very close! I'm from Launceston" (the 2nd biggest city in Tasmania). So everyone is obviously very impressed by what just transpired whereas I'm pleased I didn't look like an idiot. Or, rather, like too much of an idiot: I walked to the bar, wearing more than one layer on top, and, as a result, the whole time all this was going on, I was sweating an amount that's greater than 'profusely'. I excused myself and went to pat myself down in the restroom. Incidentally, I didn't exchange one more word with that girl the rest of the night...
The rest of the night went well; we spent almost 6 hours just sitting and chatting and slightly making fun of each other. And of course a pint or two of the sauce. All the drinking was fine until we (and by that I mean 'not I') decided to cap off the night with a Terminator. [I meant that I didn't decide to do it, but still drank. Sorry for the confusion. Ed.]This is a horrendous shot that consists of Bacardi 151, fake Absinth, and Tobasco sauce. A topless, 25-minute walk home went well.

This week is okay for now - school is officially in session. My schedule is long and hard but so far not odious. A highlight is that I had my first anatomy lab ever. It was really cool and interesting and fun to actually handle real human organs/bodies (we had a femur, a heart, a leg, and a full torso) and find all this crap I've had to learn. Good stuff.
Oh, and one more funny thing that happened, though I'm sad to say I didn't witness it, only heard about it...
Brisbane has a very high biodiversity rate in that there are tons of lizards, insects, birds, and other animals around. I literally walk past 20 different (easily recognizable) species of animal on my walk to school, with animals bounding about everywhere. So today I left for school and left the front door open (as we are wont to do when others are at the house) and 10 minutes later as my roomate was getting ready to leave, he saw a turkey walking around our kitchen. Awesome.
So all else is good. I've socialized a bit and met some nice people and am overall pretty content with studies. It's hard and a lot of work and, less than 2 weeks into it, am already studying, but it's not that bad.

Now, I'd like to introduce a new segment:
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
(I know that normally the phrase is 'geez' but I figure I give him the respect he deserves)
As I will be learning lots of stuff that I didn't know before and presumably most other people don't learn, I figure I'm at a place to share. So I do.
1) People can, as a result of consistent physical stress, have bony growths. For instance, people who constantly ride horses will have bony plate-like things grow on their inner thighs. Fruit pickers will grow bony mesas on their shoulders to support the baskets. This is in response to constant pressure (that comes from an occupation) and to protect the muscles.
2) There are things called Langer's Lines. These are lines discovered by a tirelessly-experimenting anatomist and what they show is direction of cuts that follow lines of collagen. What that means is that's how you make a cut there for minimum scarring! I think it's cool that they know if you cut obliquely on dermatome 23 there will be a tiny scar but if you cut horizontal or vertical, there will be a huge one. And he mapped it.

Week End

2007-01-25T20:59:00.000-06:00

Greetings, all. It's been a bit since the last update. Things here are going very well, surprisingly, after my first "week" (about 1.5 days of classes) of school here.
The people I've met have been all very nice and not snobby, unlike what you'd expect. I guess when they make an effort to choose bright, sociable, well-rounded students from around the world... well, they do it.
First, what is this course like? followed by some highlights.
The system of medical studies here is very interesting to me. Instead of dividing it up like in the US of 2 months anatomy, 2 months physiology, 2 months pharmacology, etc. it's all grouped together and divided by body system and case study.
So how it works is that we have our PBL groups (Problem Based Learning is the name of the education system) composed of 10 students of varying backgrounds. We meet at the beginning of the week and are given a case. We spend 3 hours talking about EVERY aspect of the case and use that to create things we need to know: anatomy of the heart, how the cardiovascular system works, method and treatment of shock, blood-borne infections, ad nausem all the things that are relevant to this particular problem.
Throughout the week we have lectures in physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology as well as labs in histology and anatomy (and another PBL group meeting to focus our studies) that are more or less centred around the areas pertinent to our case. It is through this system that we, ostensibly, learn how to medicinize well.
So far, I'm pained to say, I like it. I think that this PBL style of learning is fan-fucking-tastic and feel that if I had experienced it earlier, I could have learned more or been a better student. We just spend 3 hours talking. It's low pressure so people are comfortable talking a lot. Everyone is nice and we can joke around while we're discussing. We have a ton of reference books in our room and people are of varying backgrounds (in my group there's a guy who worked in pharmacy, a podiatrist, a woman who studied diabetes, medical engineering student, and a guy who rented out castles in Scotland. And me) and by sharing our knowledge with the help of our "tutor" (a practicing doctor who guides us but does not lecture) we learn a lot. Then we have to do self-study, of course, but so far I haven't done that. This is probably why I'm so content.
On Wednesday afternoon we had a BBQ (read: beer and bad hamburgers (or blandburgers) (I had 3 of each)) after our last lecture. It was nice standing outside by the lake, eating and drinking and talking to people. I get a little annoyed explaining why I came to Australia and where Minnesota is, but that's true when explaining everything over and over when meeting a lot of people. Everyone I've met has been cool and nice, though I haven't quite yet reached the exchange-phone-number-or-email stage yet.
On Thursday evening we had a keg party at the university bar. It was crazy cuz there were so many people who looked like your average douchy bar crowd; in fact every single drunk person there in their Billabong shirts was actually, in theory, smart and in the process of getting to the point of practicing in the art of saving people's lives. Pretty strange, twas. The party was fun, despite the long lines for the all-you-can-drink. I met a lot of more people, talked to them and had a nice time.
It's now Friday, Australia Day and I have the day off. I'm not sure what I will do. Dick around all day and perchance in the evening head over to the artificial beach/park on the river in downtown for fireworks and other stuff. Oh yes indeed.

Urban Hiker and Orientation

2007-01-22T02:50:00.000-06:00

Right now, it's dusking outside.
The heat of a Brisbane summer is pretty oppressive, but the sweltering memory quickly fades as dusk patters upon us. As the sun sets, the air fills with almost a cool glow; a kind of soft-light that rejuvenates and touches you so that you want to touch it. A kind of near-tangible beauty like coloured-smoke or Gak.
Alright, enough waxing poetic and let's get to the meat or potatoes.
I have had a bit of downtime in which to regroup myself, get acquainted with my surroundings, and buy shit that I need. As the weather is nice (though hot)
and there's a spring in my step, I've taken to use walking as means of accommodating those 3 desires. I have been walking between 5-10km a day, meandering about and running my little errands.
Yesterday was the pieds de résistance as I walked almost 3 hours in a very circuitous route with only 2 concrete objectives: meet the woman with whom I lived my prior time in Brisbane and go for a swim and respite at the lovely South Bank - a small hub on the banks of the Brisbane River, overlooking downtown, with cafes, shops, parks, mini-forests, and, most notable, the man-made Streets Beach. The trip took long, took me 11km, or almost 7 miles, and was pretty enjoyable despite the over 28C (82) heat and sun beating overhead. But oh man, once I laid body and soul into that crowded and chlorinated artificial beach-water, did the journey feel worth it.
Today was an interesting and much differenter day. I had to be at the University at the bright time of 8am for our long orientation day. After some minor paperwork and other bureaucratic hullabaloo, we sat down and were spoken to for many hours: about the school, about our program, about being a doctor (life, love, troubles, work), and much more stuff. And I have to say, despite all my cynical proclivities, the program looks very interesting and I am, in very surprising fact, excited to start learning and get on with this path.
Could it be that our hero, the young Michael's Reinberg, when he semi-capriciously chose this career path many many moons ago was actually correct in his decision? At this precise moment, it would appear so.
Or perhaps it's because the twilight is just so damn nice.