Saturday, June 30, 2012

Unexpected!

It's Saturday now.. so although it didn't happen today, it's still pretty recent! On Thursday, I went shopping with mum to buy my brother some ties (and got myself a pair of Tony Bianco heels which I've been lusting over since the beginning of last year - on sale for $50 at David Jones, last pair!) and a few jumpers from Lowes (because they're absolutely amazing - soft and warm and just perfect for Winter). When I came home, I wasn't expecting anything. Mum went out to check the mail and called me over - there was a massive package for me outside! I'm a little.. iffy.. about sending anything from ASOS here anymore, because they don't ask for your signature to collect the package - they just leave it outside. I wouldn't want anyone taking my package, so I might redirect my ASOS orders to the box address.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Strawberry shortcake!

After copious numbers of messages back and forth, Jess and I finally decided that our baking session was a go ahead. Despite the dreadful cold and wet, we managed to partially ignore our reluctance.. us Asians are so laaaaaaazy!

A lot of people have been asking me the recipe for this amazing strawberry shortcake, and yes, it was absolutely delectable! I tasted the crumbs when it came out of the oven and I have to admit that I was expecting something a little less short-bready and more.. doughy.. if that makes sense.. but I tasted the rest of this cake and was thoroughly delighted!

Here it is, the long-awaited recipe!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

AMEB ceremony!

I completely forgot that I had photos when I came back to Brisbane for the first time. I came back because I had an AMEB ceremony - I did my AMuS in flute last year and this year I had to get my certificate for it. Last AMEB exam ever! I had to come back for it. I wouldn't ever get another opportunity to listen to Brisbane's flourishing musicians.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Black Coffee Lyrics

Today, I went to the Gold Coast to visit my friend John. He's amazing - brains and a musician. Love him to bits. Anyway, back to the focus of this post.. we went to a beautiful little cafe which was tucked away, meshed in with these run-down little Asian eatery places. I totally wasn't expecting it to be in a location as it was. I guess that adds to the grunge factor of the place.

I really need to learn to sleep earlier. Maybe then I'll wake up earlier and won't struggle so much for the rest of the day. Or maybe I should just become a coffee/tea/caffeine snob. Maybe, but then again, there's the issue of my intolerance to caffeine.. should one override the other? I actually thoroughly enjoy coffee, although I'm not that much of a connoisseur. My expertise are limited to the Starbucks caramel macchiato, which, in my opinion, is amazing BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, IT'S PROBABLY CRAP OK.

I set my alarm for 8:00 and naturally, couldn't really.. get up the same minute I woke up. Instead, I played Subway Surfers to try to kickstart my adrenaline.

DON'T JUDGE ME OK SUBWAY SURFERS GIVES ME A VERY SUBSTANTIAL ADRENALINE KICK. Like seriously, if you don't believe me, you should give it a go.

So, continuing on, to add to the disorganisation of everything, I had to leave the house at around 8:30, but obviously when you wake up in the morning you really don't care whether you're going to be late, provided the time hasn't passed already. AND most of my clothes were in the wash, so I had to scurry downstairs and throw together a really.. idk I didn't like it, but it was the best outfit I could come up with, given the situation. I absolutely gunned it out of the house after mum's little freak out about not knowing where to go to catch the train etc. UGH by the time I left the house, it was 8:33 and my bus came to Sunnybank Plaza at 8:37 SHARP. I ARRIVED AT 8:37 AND THE BUS WAS LITERALLY ABOUT TO LEAVE, LIKE I COULD SEE THE DOORS SHUTTING so I ran and caught it.

The train ride was good. Free wi-fi, and more Subway Surfers. I could hardly complain, except that I wish I had a book or something to read on the train - mainly because I know my battery would probably be dying.

I got to Nerang at 10:34am sharp and I started looking for John. Apparently he'd parked on the opposite side but I didn't know that........ awks.

What an amazing station.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Road trip

George, Danny, Dylan and I went for a road trip. It took literally the entire day and most of the night as well. It was actually such a strug getting up in the morning because I went to sleep at around 2:30 this morning after committing to spend most of my limited savings on ASOS and UrbanOutfitters for Winter/Summer clothes.

FAR OUT, I'M SUCH AN IMPULSIVE SPENDER. I REALLY NEED TO EFFING CONTROL MYSELF.

Anyway, that aside, I was supposed to meet Dylan at his house at like 10am but I only woke up 10 minutes before that and I had to get ready. Literally impossible. Instead, half an hour after, they drove over to my house to pick me up. How sweet. :D We picked up George and his mum fed us amazingly just like most other Asian mums. UGH SO MUCH FOOD, I FEEL SO BAD LMAO.

I found out we were driving up to Mt Glorious. I suppose it's near Maleny/just north of QLD. Just kidding LMAO I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS, I have the most terrible sense of direction imaginable. We arrived at about.. 1ish I think to the Mt Glorious Restaurant. It was beautiful! Beautifully pricey, too. I had a honey roasted chicken filo with like.. mango-ey, slightly curry sauce. It was.. nice, but the chicken was a little overcooked, and overall, definitely not worth the $29.65 I paid for it.

GP placement complete!

As a requirement set by my university, because we go straight into the MBBS program and not the science component before the postgraduate part, we had to do a GP placement - three 3-4 hour shifts (that looks so awkward typed out). I did mine with a GP pretty close to where I live, so it only took 5-7 minutes to actually get there, which meant I only had to wake up half an hour before I was scheduled to arrive each morning. Still, that wasn't nearly enough sleep for me since I'm used to waking up at around 10-11. 8:30am isn't the best time.. such a strug getting up every morning.




Anyway, complaints aside, it was a great experience. Although I think this has consolidated my thoughts not to go into general practice and specialise in something procedural, it was so insightful. It's interesting to note that I saw probably ONE viral infection and the rest of the cases were more complex. Lots of secondary infections from compromised immune systems, mostly in cancer patients. There were also a lot of heart conditions.

I mean, considering I'm only a first year and basically know nothing, I think I probably did quite a lot given the circumstances:
  • Took some histories
  • Examined people's ears
  • Tested reflexes
  • Performed breast examinations
  • Took pulse, blood pressure
  • Checked heart and lung function
  • Lots of skin infections and lumps
I guess it kind of depends on what type of patients the GP is seeing on the days you're there. Really, a luck of the draw more than anything. I'm glad to have gotten it out of the way so that I can enjoy my holidays, except I have to do a reflective task on this placement. Joy.

I loved it. I hope the specialist placements at the end of the year are even better!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Finally have some time to breathe

Actually, kind of a contradiction. While I could be sleeping and enjoying my comatose state, instead I'm battling my fatigue and delivering this post. Why? Honestly, I'm still lost. It's a funny thing, isn't it? While our minds cry out in their desperate agony for rest, we seem to defy the clear logic and avoid what we need completely. I guess it likens a little to our parents nagging us for what seems like forever.

It could also be because I decided to indulge in a little cup of tea.



Seems harmless, right? What could tea possibly do to deter my sleep? Combine tea, or anything with the smallest morsel of caffeine, with me, potentially the person with the world's highest sensitivity to caffeine and you'll see.

Fun fact of the day? I can't tolerate much caffeine at all. If I have a FULL cup of tea in the morning, I can't go to sleep until the next morning, unless I'm so sleep deprived that I just fall asleep instantly, but that's quite rare for me. I used to drink 3-4 cans of coke per day while I was in year 12. Wasn't healthy, and I swear I developed a caffeine dependency. At one point, all I craved for breakfast was coke.. yeah. Moral of the story - I'm not a caffeine drinker. It sucks because I actually do like tea - especially bubble tea.

Point of this post - wait, there is none. Sorry for wasting your time. I should probably go to sleep now.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

One down.. two to go

I don't even know why I'm awake right now.. yet again, I said that I was going to go to sleep """"early"""" and it's almost 12am. Considering I had an exam today, I really should be going to sleep. Maybe I should be stressing more, I don't know. I think I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'm not going to do as well as I'd hoped. To be honest, I'm still in that mindset. Even through last year, everything was about doing well and achieving my full potential. My entire mentality revolved around these self-motivators:

  • I was smart enough to achieve everything in high school, so why is this any different?
  • It's all straight knowledge, so it should be easy to do well

I think I really need to learn the balance between studying and going out and what not. I just feel like if I'm not studying, then someone's going to judge me.. or something crazy like that. I know perfectly well that I'm being totally irrational, but while I'm still on relatively "easy street", I might as well take advantage of the lessened workload compared to what older years are going through right now. At the same time, I guess I don't really NEED to work as hard. As it stands, I probably could have sat the exams a few weeks ago and passed.

To be honest, this test that I sat today was a massive wake-up call. Usually I'd know my level of performance during an exam. Last year, there was not a single end of semester exam I walked out of feeling uneasy. It was a very different format and I really do much prefer it that way.. but what can you do? Legitimately, I would have really liked to do incredibly well this semester,  because let's face it, when you study, you intend to learn stuff. Today didn't show that. They assessed stuff I hadn't even looked over, and I'm cringing to think just how many marks I lost. The only comfort that's keeping me sane (barely) is the fact that today's test was the least weighted.. but at the same time it scares me because the other tests could potentially be much, much more difficult.

I'll say it now, but I got absolutely demolished on today's test. I'm preparing myself for failure and I'm not going to be surprised if I have to sit supps. I hope I don't. That 50% mark is just so close.. I hope 50% is the threshold. I'll be so angry if it isn't, because I heard that they bell curve us here which kind of sucks.

ANYWAY that aside, I ate SO MUCH today to drown my sorrows. Started off with a nice, enormous serving of muesli for breakfast and then went over a few things before going to uni for our exam. By the end of it, I was exhausted and so we went to Masala for lunch but it was closed. Far out WHY does it have to be closed on a Monday.......... we always make that mistake. Instead, we went to Maccy Ds and I just got a chicken & cheese burger and chips with sprite.. something small to suffice while we waited for Masala to open. We ran into a whole lot of people at Stockies and I honestly didn't want to talk about the exam but oh well.. eh.. I got an orange almond slice and cookies & cream ice chocolate from Gloria Jean's HOLY FUARK IT'S LIKE MY FAVOURITE DRINK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

THENNNNNNNNNNNN we went to Masala and I walked out wanting to go to sleep. I was going to go to sleep..

Nek minnit, watching Deuce Bigalow. Such a good movie omfg but I wanted to go to sleep :(

Ahh well.

On another note, my 3rd stitch phone case came AND SOMEONE SCRATCHED THE METAL. I think it scratched when I was in Sydney.. my cousins were playing with my phone case and just detatched it.. fuark oh well. I'll just get another phone in a few years. Now that it's got scratches and what not, I guess I can just chuck in my bag. I think I'm going to change the case just because yeah.. I couldn't really stop my cousins from doing it though, particularly because one of them was going through such a hard time. It's a small price to pay for a minute of escaping the reality of what happened..



ANDDDDDD I made the med1 party event for Thursday. So farking keen, you have no idea whatsoever.. I'm just glad the worst exam is over. No matter how badly I did, I just want to pass. It's quite unfair though I wreckon, because last year's mid-year KFP was NOWHERE as hard as ours was. It was honestly so bad and I had no legitimate clue about a big chunk of it.

Oh well. TWO DAYS MUFOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Last minute freak out

IT'S ALMOST 2AM AND I'M STILL AWAKE OMFG.

I honestly don't even know whether I know half of what I need to know. Like, conceptually, I think I'm going to be okay, but as far as the detail goes, I don't know.. I'm not the type of person who can just remember statistics off hand FUARK. Ughhhh I just want to pass. I don't even know why I'm posting right now, I should either be studying or SLEEPING, HOW GOOD IS THAT FOR AN IDEA.

12 HOURS AND I'M IN TEST MODE. SERIOUSLY WHERE HAS MY SEMESTER GONE?!

My major achievement for today has honestly been calming people down. Ugh, I need to calm myself down.. I don't even know why I stress this much. I was never like this during high school! Anyway, Jacob was ranting to me about how he was really stressed and needed to calm down so he came over and I just calmed him and we went through a bit of study. We had dinner afterwards and then studied and went over some more stuff. I'm so tired/over studying but scared at the same time..











Proboscis?

Seriously, I don't even know why I'm so scared about these exams. I've been through it all before, but I guess it's because it's new stuff and yeah.. well.. I better sleep.

GOOD LUCK TO ME.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Resigned to mediocrity

Maybe because I just woke up, or maybe it's because I genuinely cannot do anything else to aid my chances in doing well this semester, but I'm just so over study.

Before I go any further in my last minute efforts to stay calm, I just want to put it out there that I had the weirdest dream.. I've forgotten the majority of it, but when I try remembering, bits and pieces come back to me. I remember the main part. It was that the date was 12/12/12 and my entire grade from high school was there. As in.. THEY GOT MARRIED. There were dresses everywhere but it seemed like more of a formal than anything? They weren't just white - there was literally about every colour you could think of, and it was at a really hilly place, on the grass, but somehow there managed to be a grandstand..

I remember trying to run to the ceremony place and almost catching up to everyone before the big crowd ran in, but for some reason I couldn't keep up. That's when I realised it was a dream - my indicator for lucidity seems to be falling behind - I know I'm a slow runner, but when it's to that extent, I realise that I'm dreaming. Most of the time it comes too late but oh well. Anyway, I took it to my advantage and made a 4th year come in and drive me to a place.. it's weird because I've never actually talked to her in my entire life, but anyway that's besides the point, she drove me to some place so I could talk to a friend who's at the coast. My lucidity probably wasn't at its best because I ended up at the grandstands, hiding away, but I managed to control that and get back to the 4th year's car. I remember her words were along the lines of, "I'm glad you didn't take all night" and I remember feeling really bad because I realised that she'd been waiting for me that entire time. There are some really hazy moments from that point forward because I woke up and then went back to sleep, but basically I got people to quiz me about tomorrow's test. +1 for at least partial lucid dreaming?

ANYWAY back to the point. It's 10:12am and I honestly really need to start revising, considering my tests start tomorrow, just over 24 hours away. I swear.. I'm never going to do handwritten notes ever again. It's such a waste of time. Well, aesthetically it's probably an amazing choice but time-wise, it just takes so long and I don't think for my purposes that it's worth it. I'm pretty sure I could have covered 10-20 times the amount of content that I've been able to, just because I'm really big on the whole consistency thing, so I kept going. Fucking worst move ever. I think during last week, I went through about 6 weeks' worth of content per day, as opposed to not even 1 week's per day.. so there's definitely an improvement. Maybe I'll handwrite everything, but I've found that flow charts are really useful.

From ^ this, to v this.

Just as a comparison.. I'm shuddering to think my handwriting became so bad.. but at the same time, I'm just glad that I managed to pick up. As you can probably see, I love flowcharts, and in fact, that entire book on the bottom is now full of flow charts.. well, half full. And it's probably clear that I've pretty much disregarded the lines in the book. I might as well get a book with no lines next semester because that's going to be so much easier, like it's going to save me so much time. I'M HONESTLY SO KEEN TO CHANGE MY STUDY HABITS.

I told myself that I'd sleep/wake up early this morning, and as usual that didn't happen. Instead, I wrote out my entire metabolic map, not from memory of course, but by the end of today, it will be!


Sah proud of it. :-) I need to be able to do it by memory though and omfg idk why but I can never do the urea cycle properly URGH. APPARENTLY IT'S THE EASIEST PATHWAY BUT I JUST CAN'T DO IT. /CREY

Anyway, I should probably get back to studying now. I've got the entire day to work!

I WANT TO COMMIT :(

Friday, June 1, 2012

Privacy and a life update

When I was in Sydney, one of my cousins came down the day after and had a chat to me about Facebook privacy and such. I'm actually quite scared about what could happen to me.. so.. in the next few months, I'll be changing everything so I'm virtually unfindable on the internet. Not quite sure how I'm going to do it though, how to go about it..

It's just that my cousin is a doctor and told me to be really careful, especially as a med student.. and when I do rotations and give out my name, I don't really want to be traceable as such. I just want to take precautions and what not so that I'm safe.

I guess I'll have to change my email addresses and stuff, and make sure my name (at least my full name) isn't anywhere to be found. I may even need to make another email address just for social networking sites and associate myself publicly as an alias, well not really, just not putting my full name. Ack. So.. freaking.. inconvenient. I guess it's reasonable though, but it just makes me feel like I'm growing up. Like.. really growing up. And I'm not sure whether I like that - I mean, I'm turning 19 this year! I remember when I was 15.. not even that, like.. when I started high school. Far out, time goes so effing quickly, I can hardly believe it sometimes. Everything has passed pretty much like a click of my finger - it's crazy. I thought high school would take forever to be over with, but it passed pretty much in the space of 24 hours (figuratively, of course), and first year dent just flew even more quickly. I've heard that the older years pass by even more quickly.

Semester 1 has gone incredibly fast. Exams are literally just around the corner and I'm still stuck here. I left Townsville on Tuesday and it's already Saturday.. I'm finished exams in about 5 days and then I'll have six weeks of just pure bliss. I've got a fair bit more to cover before Monday, and I'm not quite sure how much I can realistically do before I completely burn out.

I guess I haven't really posted since like.. idk 6 months ago or something. I'll fill you in on my life in a few days. I'm moving back onto Blogspot, simply because it's the easiest blogging platform and I can write about whatever I want without making my posts seems stupid or too long. In saying that, I'm still going to use Tumblr just because I'm so attached to it - eh seems lame but whatever. It's almost 12am and I've had pretty much zilch sleep.

I'm starting to hallucinate and my head feels like I'm going to fall off a bridge and commit. Literally. Ahh well, I'm sort of resigned to the fact that I may not do that well this semester, but this feeling is something I'm going to have to get used to. I'm not sure what's wrong with me - the competitive streak is still in me, but even though it's not really directed at anyone, I still want to do the best I can. Even while I sit here typing this, I have this inkling to want to open my biochem books and just write out biochemical pathways, simply because I don't really know them as much as I probably should. My knowledge base feels very.. inadequate at the moment and I absolutely hate that feeling. It's gotten to the point where I've spent far too much time to be happy to be achieving mediocrely. It feels really good to get that off my chest and see myself admitting it. I don't know whether I'll ever be able to rid myself even partial competitiveness. I hate seeing it in other people, but I guess that's because it's something I utterly detest in myself.

However, at the same time, I guess it's good to push myself, but perhaps not to the point where my brain is legitimately struggling to keep awake. I can actually see double vision and it's horrible. Anyway, sleep is awaiting me and I'll update this every few hours to keep myself sane.

Pre-exam freak out approaching


Let's face it, I'm in a huge ruckus right now. My insides are unsettled, my mind is everywhere and my entire body is just sick to death of studying. My entire week has comprised:


  • Waking up
  • Studying until about 5pm
  • Breaks until around 6pm
  • Dinner
  • More study until I sleep
  • Showering at 9pm to wake me up more
  • More study until 12am
  • Sleep
  •  
  •  
  •  
  • Repeat
This week has been hectic. As some of you probably know, my aunty passed away last Friday morning and the funeral was on Wednesday, which fully offset my schedule because I was supposed to come back to Brisbane last Friday, but obviously I couldn't really do anything about that.

It was sad. Really, really sad.. not to the point where I cried, because for some reason I never cry at funerals, but the worst part was when my cousins (my aunty's sons) were kissing her coffin during the burial service. Ack. Death is such a morbid subject. Literally.

Anyway, I just had the biggest panic attack. Fully.. effing.. thought it was Saturday, leaving me with only just over a day to revise everything, when really it's only Friday. Seems petty, but during SWOTVAC, time is incredibly INvaluable.