medic's life in england

RRRRRRRrum Balls

2009-12-11T13:50:00.008Z

i first tried rum balls (german christmas delicacy) at the Birmingham german christmas market with stephanie and we both fell in love with them, one cost gbp 1.50 ( what a rip off!) but we went back each year to the market hunting for it

so I decided to make my very own rum balls fuelled by steph's attempt over summer! did some research online, and chose this recipe. that i thought would resemble what we had at the market. bought the ingredients ( rum cost me 5 quid, but nvm, being able to make my own rum balls made me happy!) and got cracking!

made 27 with the recipe, its really easy but time consuming to manually crush the biscuits ( my own hands did a better job than my blender) and roll the balls in chocolate sprinkles. ran out of choc sprinkles eventually and used dessicated coconut instead.

brought some to my student project meeting, spanish christmas themed class and one each for the doctors that i wanted to thank since yesterday was my last day at City Hospital. ( felt quite embarrassed handling only one rumball to the doctors) my friend immediately asked me for the recipe and went to buy the ingredients that night itself. boy was i brimming with pride :D

will be making more to give out as christmas present =)

Broken heart..........

2009-11-10T19:01:00.011Z

.....syndrome

no this is not a post lamenting on broken heart, this is an educational post on :

Broken Heart Syndrome

also known as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy / Stress Cardiomyopathy

Its is a condition commonly mistaken as Myocardial Infarction ( heart attacks) as it is presented with the typical symptoms of chest pain that radiates to the left arm, ST elevation on ECG, and mildly elevated troponin. ( ie all signs for MI)

Upon emergency cardiac catherisation ( where a cathether is inserted into the patient's groin ( femoral artery) into the coronary arteries ( blood vessels that supplies the heart), no significant narrowing of the coronary arteries is found ( heart attacks are usually caused by a blockage of coronary arteries)

Ventriculogram ( where dye is squirted into the heart chambers shows that the apex of the heart is not pumping, wherelse the basal part of the ventricle is hypercontracting to compensate. The pumping action causes ballooning of the basal left ventricular. This resembles takotsubo, which in japanese means 'fishing pot for trapping octopus'

The symptoms are usually precipitated by emotional stress ( eg death of close ones ) and once the stress is relieved, the symptoms will resolve without any signs of cardiac damage.

just when u think u have mastered history taking...

2009-09-08T21:43:00.003+01:00

taking history of a patient with heart pain:

'where is your pain?'

" at the supermarket doctor"

' ok...where do u feel the pain on your body?"
******************************************

trying to find what was the reason patient is admitted?

' what brought you to the hospital Mrs Smith?"

' the ambulance, doctor'

2009-09-06T17:15:00.001+01:00

carrot cupcakes that smells divinely of cinnamon! i added alot to cover the ginger and nutmeg smell. this is my 3rd try, the next time i will decorate it with cream cheese frosting!peanut butter banana oatmeal cupcakes! but because the peanut butter i used was not creamy and salty enough, i could barely taste it=( the cake was really dense with banana though. i hide banana slices at the bottom and caramelised slices on top for the last 5 minutes of baking.
will be coating it with cadbury chocolate spread before i give it out to my coursemates tomorrow- my first day of hospital teaching!!
not the best cupcake ever but hope it'll sell>< i had 3 myself for breakfast and it was really filling!

coffee causes boob shrinkage?!

2009-08-22T14:43:00.002+01:00

Women who drink a lot of coffee may see their breasts become more petite, according to the results of a new Swedish study.

http://www.thelocal.se/15016/20081016/

no wonder my cup size never increased ever since puberty

oatmeal scones with buttermilk and lemon zest; Pumpkin Bao

2009-08-14T05:51:00.005+01:00

third try of scones!! this time my mum gave her thumbs up!

doesnt bear the resemblence of a typical scone but it's because i didnt dare to mix it for too long coz....

after some research online i realise why my first batch of scones failed - overkneading / mixing causes gluten to develop in the dough. gluten is the protein in the flour that wraps water within it to prevent the flour from rising.

buttermilk sounds chim right? all I did was squeeze some lemon juice into the amount of milk needed, leave it to stand for 10 minutes. comercial buttermilk is made by adding bacteria into milk, or it is the residue left from making butter. it's suppose to make the scone fluffier but i am not sure to what extend is this true

but i found out it was the oat flakes that made the scones smelled so nice. was puzzled why they used the term 'rolled oats', turned out that the oats are processed using giant rollers to remove the bran layer.

and i practised my bao making skills with mum! we made pumpkin bao with custard fillings and peanut powder

we're suppose to take a small ball of dough and put it into a glass of water, when the ball of dough floats, the bao has risen enough to be steamed. somehow we waited for 2 hours and the ball never surfaced =( so we steamed it nevertheless

ass hole shaped bao. MY MOTHER MADE IT NOT ME

voila!!

we made more baos that evening again ( bao craze) but it turned out hard, not quite sure what went wrong. mum bought sakura powder from penang and was really excited to make bao with it, she was so dejected when we found out it is just fish stock dyed pink, so we had a batch of unrisen, fishy smelling bao.

itching to try baking oatmeal cookies ever since i tried May's cookies so i made my own while waiting for May's recipe

too thick too hard. doesnt help that i reduce the amount of butter =p

experimenting with scones

2009-08-08T11:46:00.003+01:00

my first batch was a disaster. not quite, but it tasted nothing like the scones in Winter Warmers.

it's usually our housemaid who gets the biggest sharing of whatever i bake.

For my first batch of scones that did not raise properly ( should have let it raise longer since it was raining) so mum told the maid

' this is English scones!! its suppose to taste like that! ( with the flour still uncooked in the middle, a taste that resembles cappatti)

my second batch, i used the recipe Phey Yee recommended=) Strawberry Sunrise Scones substituting milk with yoghurt and orange zest.

(mum to maid : " this time its French scone!!')

bah. its always nice to have someone who has no idea what a scone should taste like.

i think it would have tasted nicer if we didnt subsititute half the white sugar with brown sugar. mum say its just nice for her since its not sweet. the strawberries werent sweet at all=( i think it become soggy after being baked together with the scones, maybe should try freezing the strawberries next time.

nevermind, mum likes it and i think it looks nice, going to try again!

some post exam shopping.....

2009-06-17T11:59:00.006+01:00

here's what i bought..

for my summer read ;D

bet you were expecting pictures of clothes, shoes, accessorises

amazon does such good deals on second hand books in good condition!! some were as cheap as 2.76 gbp ( book price 0.01 gbp, are u kidding me???? its the postage fee per book that add up to ~3gbp but that is still half price)

so far i've bought :
1.The Diving Bells and The Butterfly (lock-in syndrome )
2. Never Let Me Go
3. The Book Thief
4. The Reader
5. The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Times ( autism : Asperger syndrome)
6.We Need To Talk About Kevin
7. I Know This Much Is True (schizoprenia)

and it was fun researching, reading reviews from facebook's visual bookshelf application -its one of those rare application that I actually like from facebook.

and allow me to be geeky over my choice of books featuring medical conditions ;D

eating in spain

2009-06-14T01:57:00.006+01:00

a typical tapas bar with the array of tapas on display. I've read that the tapas with wooden skewers are not meant to be picked up by the stick as the bread and meat would fall off, showing that you are an inexperienced eater. The skewer functions to hold the pieces together only, to lift the tapas, one has to hold it from its side.

most cafeteria offers a good money for value lunch menu set with a tapas, a main meal and dessert. We had a cheap set deal on our first meal though the quality of the food was proportional to how much we paid. still it was good enough an exposure to spanish culture.

for our tapas, we chose red sausage ( chorizo) which was really succulent and rich in flavour, somewhat resembling that of taiwanese sausage. the salted codfish ball and fried cuttlefish were classic tapas. didnt like the snail tapas at all.and the long anticipated paella - spanish seafoodrice, i swear i will not leave spain without tasting one! i've seen my housemate cooked it once but did not properly learn it, a shame really. this one was alright, i think it's one of those heat-it-and serve-it type rather than properly brewed from scratch type.

A proper paella takes 20 minutes to cook, says the guidebooks, brewed with heaps of seafood.the orange colour is a result of - xaffron/saffron, a type of seasoning that comes from a rare flower, saffron. i did not realise that saffron was that expensive until we hunted for a pack as a souvenir for our housemate.

for dessert we were served the typical spanish dessert - flan, custard with caramelised sugar on top. thought it was rather sweet and tasted like any normal custard minus the pastry, liked the burnt taste of the caramelised sugar though. as the saying goes, a little bit burnt always taste nice...

another dish i ached to tried ever since i saw a man laddle himself a generous helping of black goo is the Aroz Negros! - black rice, paella cooked with squid ink! this one tasted nicer than the previous one even though it was another one of those precooked version. our lips were lightly stained black after the meal:)

last but not least, we had xurros/churros, fried dough. it's a miniature version of our very own chinese you tiao. served with hot chocolate with the consistency of chocolate mousse in which we dipped the churros into. the dough is squeezed through a star-shaped syringe to give it its shape.

2009-06-11T15:31:00.003+01:00

holly shit

me and steph got invited for Distinction Viva for Preclinical Biological Science!!! It's a 15 minutes oral test where if we pass we'll be awarded distinction!!!!!

It's been three weeks ago since our last exam?? Not in the mood for revising 2 year's worth of notes by next Tuesday and dont think I can rmbr all my lectures=(

But heck, got invited happy enough liao, pass or not doesnt matter=)

i still cant believe it, maybe its based on 1st year results only.

japanese-themed house party

2009-06-08T22:00:00.009+01:00

we weren't dressed in kimonos or sumos or ninja outfits (javier thought it was the dress code XD), it was a japenese FOOD theme party. In fact, I was wearing my 8-years-old Chinese Orchestra T shirt again=/

Our housemate Claire loves Japan culture ever since she watched The Memoir of a Geisha and even takes Japanese lessons at uni. So we thought it would be good fun to teach them how to make sushi over a japanese/east asia themed meal.

so we had japanese curry, miso soup. the japanese curry ( using steph's curry cubes) was a sell out ;D mainly coz it is not spicy albeit the term 'curry'. It was the first dish that i learn before coming to uk and back in college days, its the only dish i always cook for occasions.garlic fried rice by steph with bonito flakescawanmushi which took an hour to steam, it was my first try as well. Nobody touched it to begin with, so i took a spoonful and said ' I shall eat it to show you its not poisonous' XD

my british housemates said it was something they never had before and they couldnt quite describe what it tasted like.
sushi ingredients,we used mayo tuna and salmon as sushi fillings too.
kimchi at the side. Vitty said eating kimchi was like eating nettles.
and so we begin, teaching them how to roll sushi, manz I was kinda stressed out when all eyes were on me demonstrating sushi-making, would have been so embarrassed if the sushi just falls apart XD
luckily it did not, and we let everyone else have a go. It was like a cultural lesson=)I was so excited when I found fermented rice wine 酒酿at the oriental shop!!酒酿桂圆 rice wine with tang yuan is my favourite chinese dessert - try it at Dragon-I!
Cooked the tang yuan in 2 batches - one alcohol-free, one with the rice wine.
steph and eimon brought out a surprise birthday cake after the meal!!=) it was lemon cheesecake!! one of my favourite cheesecake flavour that is not available from Secret Recipe.
*wish that we will all pass our finals and dont have to come back early for resits*
Results will be out next friday=((((

Of Tapas, Sangria and Flamenco

2009-06-06T09:54:00.011+01:00

sangria!! means 'blood' coz of its red hue.
this was made from scratch by the bartender,so it was nicer than than then 2 euro sangria we had at our hostel ( though that was a good cheap option to try out sangria)

its a mixture of fruit juice, red wine, gin, rum, sugar, fruit slices.

note the white layer at the bottom? that's a bloody ( no pun) layer of sugar!! made it more palatable ( for me) than the bitter one I had at the hostel.

I was surprised when we lead to this hidden backyard as it is not visible from the front of the cafeteria - Acoma cafeteria on El Boqueria,2.
There was only 2 waiters serving everyone of us, so although we reached at 8pm, we were only served around 9pm and missed the early show. And the waiter spoke no English - they were from Equator.

a Scottish guy sat down opposite us while we were waiting and for one moment I was worried he is a cheat. Turned out he is an English guide for people who took the flamenco package, and he told us many interesting stories like the origin of tapas, flamenco, sangria over our dinner.

our tapas plate :

chorizo (smoked cured sausage) get its red colour from the dried smoked red pepper

In this photo : chorizo / sausage; jamon / ham ; mushrooms , green peppers , baguette rubbed with tomato , olives , tortilla de patatas / spanish omelette with potatoes

Tapas is a snack usually eaten as a complement with alcoholic drinks and has many stories of origin. According to one, to cover the pungent smell of rotten cheese served ( so that customer aren't aware that it's rotten), wine is served alongside.

Tapas are usually served in small brown round plates, as wine and tapas are consumed in a socialising environment. The small brown bowls are placed on top of the wine glass to free one's hand for the customary handshake.

A more practical explanation is, the Spaniards have their dinner rather late at night - between 9 to 11 pm. Hence they usually have a small snack at the bar to socialise with their friends before heading home for a proper big meal.

Most of us think that Flamenco is the Spanish dance, but the dance is only part of it. Flamenco is a form of art consisting of guitar, singing and finally the dance.

Flamenco is heavily influenced by the Jews, an african tribe, and the gypsies.

the dancers always look as if they are in pain or suffering. I finally knew why, the Jews and the africans were prosecuted by the Spaniard for not being Christians, the songs and dance depict their sufferings. Only the gypsies remain in Spain, hence people normally only associate flamenco with gypsies.The band itself was pretty amazing, made me fell in love with Spanish guitar, the quick notes, the deft fingers, and their passion. The lady dancer kept huffing and puffing, I guess tapping one's feet constantly at an impossible speed is quite energy consuming.

just short of watching a bull fight and our Spanish culture experience would have been perfect=)

Barceloneta Beach

2009-06-06T09:33:00.007+01:00

Tom said look out for the nudist beach in Barcelona! and i thought woohoo~should definitely check it out. Though just as a drop by rather than spending an afternoon joining the nude crowd, hence our inappropriate beach wear ( jeans??sneakers??) Barcelona was that hot, i think i turned darker in only 3 days time:(

anyhow, I didn't expect to see the beach to be so packed full of people, there was more sand than people!
it was a long looooong walk from the nearest metro station

most tourist here dont walk, they either cycle, or use the skateboard, or roller blades. its kinda cool when you see people skateboard pass in a group

so while resting our tired feet on a bench, i finally spotted the ledendary nudism, spotted one lady talking into a phone. that was about it really, there are probably more naked ladies just that it would have been obvious if we wandered nearer to the sand gawking

we came to Barcelona for Anthonio Gaudi's colourful, imaginative architectures, and even at the beach there are some spectacular monuments?

though this haphazardly decked boxes are not the works of Gaudi

And also sandcastles by street artists

Barcelona -transport, lodging

2009-06-05T20:10:00.010+01:00

Swine flu hit Spain and UK really badly ( more than 100 cases confirmed) and initially we hesitated whether or not to go forth with our post-finals Barcelona trip.

I was really bummed coz from the initial 5 people group, we lost 3 travelmates, 1 had to renew his passport in China, the other went back to Malaysia for an entrance exam. Just me and Steph in pick pocket infested Spain, and we would be reaching BCN near midnight.

All the meticulous planning since Easter along side revising for finals wasted? Thanks to Javier for pushing me to go, Roger my junior who spontaneously agreed to join us at the very last minute, we eventually hit the road…

…Armed with mask my mum sent from Malaysia!!

No kidding, we were the only passengers wearing masks! Bet we looked like paranoid idiots =p or doctors-to-be on a missionary trip? better be safe than sorry.

shan't bored you with all the fine details so they will be in tiny prints at the end of this post :)

BCN stands for Barcelona, it was a really nice youth hostel experience. We had a 6 people dorm with bunk beds that squeeks everytime I turn on my sides - think Steph who slept below me didnt had a good sleep coz of me:(

On our first night, our roommate was a Malaysian studying in NTU Singapore! What a small world! They were on a one month europe tour on a budget of 5000 Singapore dollar.

Found the door lock system uber cool, its a wrist watch that we flash at the green button to open the door and our locker.

Ryanair :~ 60 pounds return flight, cheaper if booked earlier.
-checked in online
-free 10 kg hand carry luggage allowance.

1 hour bus ride: Girona airport - Barcelona Nord Bus Station
- the bus timetable coincides with Ryanair’s flight schedule.
- return ticket : 21 euros.

Hello BCN youth hostel – 23 euros/ person/night
- taxi from Nord Bus Station 17 euros
- metro from Arc de Triumph ( Nord bus station) to Parel.lel stop
- bookings made via hostelbookers website only requires 10%deposit of the total charge

Metro around BCN –
T10 travel ticket - 7.70 euros
- 10 journeys unlimited days,
- each journey last 1hour 15 min
- Can be shared with many people

2 day travel card - ~10 euros
- unlimited journey within 2 days
- individual ticket

I bought the T10 thinking it would be cheaper shared among us, didn’t really know how it works but I survived with it for 3 days. My friends bought the 2 days tic and a single tic ( 1.50 euros) for our final trip to the bus station on the last day.

enchilidas at Ros's

2009-06-04T09:09:00.011+01:00

after our penultimate paper, I bumped into Ros, my first year classmate, in the Uni toilet. We decided to have a catch up date either dining out or cooking together.

Ros has been a vegetarian for 4 years with a story behind it. She stayed in Prague for a week, eating meat stew, meatballs, meat soup, meat this meat that, and got sick of meat and since then converted to a vegetarian.

so i thought, oh no, what presentable vegetarian dish have I got to share with her??

鱼香茄子? has got mince pork.
蕃茄炒蛋?doubt it would be nice without chicken breast
凉伴?vinegar pickled cucumber?
干扁四季豆??it's only long green beans with pepper, nice as a side dish but to eat it with rice only as dinner? I would make do with that myself

sooooooooooo, I said, Ros, teach me how to make your favourate dish

We made Enchilidas!! a Mexican wrap somewhat similar to fajita. It was that easy to make, quick and simple. All we had to do was stir fry the ingredients, stir in the sauce paste and shredded mature cheddar, wrap it in tortilla and pop it into a preheated oven till the cheese melts and voila!I made it yesterday with my housemate Steph but i added chicken breast, and a tad too little sauce as topping, but my 2nd try should somewhat resemble Ros's =p

recipe:

1. stir fry sliced mushroom, onion, capsicum, chicken breast.
2. stir in canned pineapples, canned sliced olives

3. mix one lump of tomato puree with little bit of water, add in dashes of paprika as seasoning.

4. stir in tomato paste and shredded extra mature cheddar.

5. wrap fillings in tortilla, placing them in the centre but leave spaces at the margins.

6. simply roll up the tortilla longituidinally from both sides, the toppings will hold it in place.

7. dribble remaining tomato paste on top of the wraps and sprinkle more shredded cheese on top.8. bake in preheated oven ( 180 degree? i set mine at 200 coz I am that impatient, but the tortilla wrap came out crispy like biscuit - it's suppose to be soft ) till cheese melts.

just the book that i want but would be too shy to be caught flipping through at the bookstore

2009-05-27T17:16:00.004+01:00

yea and i did a great job feigning horror when i unwrapped the post from turtle in front of my housemates
*ahem*
the second book was really sweet coz i am working hard on my rubbish presentation skills=)

turning 21 on 21st=)

2009-05-21T20:11:00.006+01:00

as always, i have exams on my birthday

i woke up at 7am by the postman ringing the doorbell

since my housemate eimon always have parcels coming in, i thought ok la, i'll go get the door least they leave a collect slip

so first, i was greeted by this :

from my housemate steph=)

and then still clad in my pajamas and bleary eyes, the postman thrusted this into my arms:

no kidding yee, i stood there like for one minute,

i was expecting a card, or maybe something sweet and small since u mentioned i will get a post,

but, whoa

i mean like WHOA

i especially love the fact that each item has a reason behind it=)

chocolate with marshmallow to wean me off caffeine

miniature krispy kremes ( see? i even took a bite) coz my best mate from high school bakes the wicked-est,loveliest looking, beautifully decorated cakes and muffins and i only get to taste them visuallyshe baked my favourite apple cinammon muffin though i am not there to taste it, but i get this non perishable strawberry muffin towel=) to wipe my saliva i know i know

no pictures of timtam yee, coz its already in my tummy ;D but it was really yummy=)

thank you so much yee, the sweet blog post and all these. and all i ever did was send u birthday cards. i am a pampered spoiled girl ( with pink lip gloss, hahaha first ever yee! ) i did the stupiest thing, i actually grabbed one of the puppy postcards and opened it - for a sec i thought u wrote me a whole box full of postcards XD

apparently i am to write u a box full of postcards XD

i cant even start telling u how touched i was, and how happy it made me=)

nice little water bottle from steph so that i can stop accumulating cancerous gene mutation from plastic bottlesand a physiotherapy stretching aid from kevin=)

only two friends ever nagged me to do my physio, one was vivien, the other was kev.

dear turtle, i am waiting for my post ;D

2009-05-19T16:55:00.002+01:00

sorry yee this may sound abit familiar to u, i was just too lazy=p

OSCE (clinical examinations like taking blood pressure, whacking patients with a plastic hammer) today!!!~

and i totally fuck up the clinical ques muhahahhaha. but i am just glad its
1. over
2. i didnt forget the steps
3. my mind didnt go blank

though i forgot to wash my hands with alcohol, didnt know my lower limb innervation well, and was too intimate when i measured the hot british smiley face MALE patient's mid thigh circumference.

hahaha. aiya. more to come in my clinical years.

MY FRWEN IS GG TO BE A NEUROSURGENT HOW COOL IS THAT~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ;D

2009-03-27T22:18:00.001Z

last day of pre-clinical year lectures=)

happy birthday phey yee=)

2009-03-07T17:28:00.003Z

not good with words, but ya, happy birthday to my high sch best mate=)thanks for always being there for me, encourgaging me, giving me support at my lowest and for still being a great friend after years of separation=)

3D anatomy student project

2009-03-01T15:40:00.003Z

so i have been working on a 86 years old man's dead body for my student project, dissecting the hip. after weeks of peeling the skin and fat, we finally get to slice two muscles apart!!- reflecting the muscles. felt like cutting the ribbons for an opening ceremony

steph is working on the digestive system, and they accidentally poked through the large intestine to reveal some feces>< they had to put on mask coz the stench was horrible

and another girl who was to look at the female reproductive system worked her way through the pelvis - to find the uterus was non existence. there was not scar on the corpse's abdomen, so either she had a hysterectomy ( with no scar??) or she a peritonitis ( infection of the abdominal cavity) and the bacteria ate away her uterus ( is that even possible? that is scary)

anywayz. we had this intriguing lecture presented in debate form on some controversial issues.

case 1. a deaf couple is going through ivf and requests to choose an embryo that will be deaf upon birth. they consider deafness not as a disability but as a subgroup of culture using a different language - sign language. should their request be turned down, they view it as discrimination and equate it to the wiping out of deaf community during the holocaust.

in most case, patients would want to select either the gender of the fetus or to screen out embryo with genetic disease / inherited disease. so it was quite interesting when the couple actually wanted to select a fetus with a defect.

they live in a deaf community, so if the child was born with perfect hearing, he would be the odd one out in the deaf community. yet it would be unfair to deny the child of normal hearing just because of the parent's whim.

case2
husband is in permanent vegetative state after a car crash. wife wants to extract his sperm to have ivf or artificial insemination as they have yet to have children. it is legal to store sperm without patient consent but to use the sperm without patient consent is Battery ,i.e illegal. and it is not in the patient's best interest to perform such an invasive procedure to extract sperm. there was no evidence that he would consent for the wife to have his kids after his death.

sensibily one would sympathise with the wife and dont see a problem with her request, but sometimes the law just makes things hard. but it was true that if the kids serves as a replacement to the deceased husband then it is not right.

case3
woman does not meet the criteria to be funded an ivf cycle. she cannot afford it. another couple offers to pay for her ivf is she shares some of her eggs with them. they say it should not be accepted bcoz she is not donating it free willingly, like in organ donation or blood donation. coz she was donating it to get something else in return, that she was forced to consent to that donation to achieve her own means.

but then again, u dont suffer from any disadvantage by donating eggs, it is nothing like giving up a kidney. and if it does the patient no harm why not? i dont understand why they made a great fuss about giving up one's 'genetic inheritance', but maybe the thought that somewhere out there is a kid who has your genes but is someone else's children is not that comfortable a thought.

interesting

Body's World Exhibition in London

2009-02-22T15:55:00.012Z

We had an ethics and law lecture few weeks ago regarding organ donation. Our lecturer briefly touched on this Body's World exhibition which shows the dissected human body . The creator of this exhibition thought that learning about anatomy and dissections should not just be a privilge of medical students / healthcare workers, the public has the right as well.

didnt know i would be visiting this exhibition a few weeks later, i was so surprised it was actually in London till this August!!!!

Dr. Gunther Von Hagen invented the technique plastination which was used as a basis of his specimens in Body's World

it was great fun to see the relations of muscles, organs nerves in 3D rather than our 2D pictures from textbooks. and i liked the way they presented the various important body parts in a very artistic way. There was this model of a man riding a dissected horse! the horse's liver, lungs, intestine was visible from a window section, and gosh they were humongous.

there was another model where the man seemed to have moved so fast that he moved out of his skin and muscles! - the specimen was shown in two parts, the skin and musculature in front, and the skeleton a fraction of distance behind. loved the effect.

we kept gasping in amazement like' oh my gosh i didnt know that our 3 auricles were that teeny!' or ' oh so this is what they meant by ...' for once i understood what the inguinal canal is, so much easier than reading tonnes of words and still dont get it

this is what i meant by the exhibition having aesthetic value. unlike our boring prosection specimens in uni where the corpse is just a pale dull yellow, lying flat on the dissection table, the specimens at Body's World are literally full of life - they play chess, played rugby, basketball, posed in a dancing position, performed gymnastic- one was even doing taichi><

there was this specimen of a pregnant lady with half of her uterus exposed to demonstrate how a fetus is positioned in it

great way of revising anatomy=)

2009-02-17T19:11:00.005Z

they TRIED to spell Paris

our youth hostel in Paris pressumably was rather cheap coz : bunk beds!! how cool! i always wanted to try sleeping on a bunk bed. used to have one in the maid's room, me and my brother would always climb up and down pretending we are pirates sailing on a ship.

anyhow, back to the cheap rooms ; we had to put on the bedsheets ourselves, the top bunk was covered in a sheet of dust. i got the lower bunk coz i wasnt too keen on climbing up>the Arc of Triumph on Champs Elysee=) and up we go on the winding-never-ending staircase

apparently u are not allowed entry if u are only wearing ur boxer/knickers

but we were rewarded with a panaromic view of Champs Elysee

not too happy with just eating Macdonalds when we have travelled all the way to Paris, so as my mates happily queued to get their orders, i sneaked out to buy some ciabata sandwich next door and some desserts=) paris didnt have much to offer in terms of food - or rather, we didnt know the right place to look for good typical french food. but i reckon french food would be quite costly

anyhow, in the end the only pastry /dessert shop we went was Paul, apparently quite a famous outlet. which, i already came across and tried their macaroon in Dubai airport

pistachio macaroon in Dubai
raspberry tarts in Paris

ah well=)at least everytime i fly home i will get to try a new dessert at Dubai airport

happy birthday TMNT=)

2009-02-09T21:12:00.004Z

ur lamb-burger model

and nanchuks presented by bruce lee!!!

see how nice a fren i am

o i found a valid reason why ur a snail - they crawl at the same speed as turtles ,i.e. u XD

what's that teeny lump of meat???

2009-02-08T22:18:00.002Z

escargot!!! french for snails=)teeny piece of meat not even enough to stuff the slits in between my teeth for one euro. no sweat. it was like chewing on rubber in garlic sauce - but a tasty rubbereiffel tower and the Louvre museum. Free entrance on the first weekends in the month - we got in for free~it was a really big musuem, but for non - artist tourists like us, we took pictures of the glass pyramid and headed straight for famous pieces like Mona Lisa

my bunk bed at the cheap hostel.

and yep that's my Medics' Weekend's away trip to Paris in short=)

parcels for ing!!!

2009-02-04T22:40:00.002Z

8 postcards cellotaped together. supposed to be sent in 2007 but my Alzeimer ridden friend forgot the existence of these cards till 2009. tsk mr SNAIL

and this cute lil notebook- looks can be deceiving-they are made from elephant shit to preserve the environment

kuih bangkit!! made in Malaysia by Phey yee!! ( hint to turtle who made shortbread, see how nice my friend is unlike u=p )

chinese new year

2009-01-28T21:22:00.002Z

first cny duet performance ever at malaysian society cny dinner=) always wanted to do it but never had the guts

i just didnt give a damn to what the audience think, it was all about having fun dueting with my friend on his harmonica. coz i realise to the audience, we're just background music, fighting for shares of the meagre amount of food served was more important =p

kev made everyone stood upright and listen to him in silence.....coz he kicked start with Negaraku, what a cheat XD. then we did rasa sayang, 凤杨花鼓,恭喜恭喜,金蛇狂舞

catch me on facebook!!!i uploaded the video, personal fav is 金蛇狂舞 coz of the dueting part, was like a conversation using music=)

may i touch ur vagina...

2009-01-24T11:36:00.000Z

mwahahaha yee, u are not the only one to have poke ur fingers up patient's asshole now XD

had anatomy the other day and i waited with anticipation when our demonstrator said we are going to practice vaginal examination

coz when we were learning how to palpate the apex of the heart, we actually had a live model. a lady just strode in and stripped off her top (bras on). and we all *ahem* had fun palpating her chest

nb - apex of the heart is right below the left nipple

so u can imagine how disappointed i was when my demontrator walked in with the model in the picture

as usual we had to ask patient's consent before we examine her.

steph's classmate went ' may i touch ur vagina?"
demonstrator acting as patient : "no"
steph's fren : 'please?" *eager eyes*

i poke two of my fingers in, it was a cavity with a bulb in the middle - the cervix i think. and i could feel the uterus through the anterior abdominal wall when i push the cervix forward

the human body is way weird

2009-01-11T08:44:00.002Z

let my heart take a good rest=)

thx junfu

眼睛不能没眼泪 - 古巨基

微笑吧容我把天真留下
离去吧忘记永久这童话
想找快乐何不飞奔抱住他
一起开心留下不再开心由它

愿你记住结束感情没有罪
变心不是你不对
假使背着良心一起太傻女

愿我记住眼睛不能没眼泪
只因沙石要洗去
真心爱人无非想她有人可登对
明智地无意对伤感回避
牺牲我後才知心中有慈悲
麻痹地忘记背影多明媚
相恋告别全因不想再自欺
想我宽恕傻话心会更改无它

愿你记住结束感情没有罪
变心不是你不对
假使背着良心一起太傻女
愿我记住眼睛不能没眼泪
只因沙石要洗去
真心爱人无非想她有人可登对

再找安眠药有罪再不肯睡我不对
这麽伟大疗伤不必靠药水
无需宽恕有新感情没有罪
如果他这麽理想别要内疚心虚
强装宽容就算累你不安是我不对
不忍放下谁可找到最合适伴侣

first house dinner=)

2008-11-29T23:09:00.007Z

after 2 months of moving in to our new house, i finally had a dinner with my housemates. we decided to head for... Chinese food!!! I wasn't too sure about introducing authentic chinese food to the sweet and sour pork loving brits, but when i saw how kev's jitsu mates licked up their plates at his celebration dinner ( kev got a bronze in the national jitsu competition!!!) , i thought, hmm maybe their tolerance level isnt as bad as i thought.

Steph and Vitty ( landlord's daughter who lives with us). we're the bbq lamb musketeers!

food was good=)i love the bbq lamb, and the Dong Po pork trotters, and the aromatic duck , and the,.....we were saying that the difference between english soup and chinese soup is, english soup is so thick that it is opague, u cant see through it. wherelse chinese soup is like clear water, no hidden surprise XD

there was this Ants on Tree dish蚂蚁上树, which is basically vercmilli noodles fried with minced pork. one of them went ' where are the ants??? aww i am so disappointed'

and then we went home to set up a christmas tree!!! albeit without the ornaments and led lights coz Vitty's parents took them back home. just have to wait till when they next come around=)

vitty's butt sticking out under the tree=phousemates=)

my first proper English roast dinner

2008-11-22T07:32:00.003Z

...by Kev's best mate, Tom who makes his own bread from scratch ( yes yeast and flour )

think malaysia, think nasi lemak, think italy , think pizza, thin japan, think sushi. but think england? blank. i wouldnt call dunking a battered fish into hot oil (fish and chips) as something representative. then my british flatmate told me, the british homecooked food are usually served at home, u cant find them in restaurants, one of the typical english food is Sunday Roast. basically, just boil all the veggies, then coat everything in olive oil, and dribble more olive oil every now and then onto the veggie while roasting them. the veggie would end up crispy on the outside and soft in the inside.

lamb with mint sauce is absolutely divine~

the portion was MASSIVE
a close up

and potato skins made by me~~~didnt taste as nice as it looks*ahem* looks can be deceiving=p

i was rendered useless in the kitchen, so end up being the dishwasher><

2008-10-31T19:59:00.005Z

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

me got Prize for Oustanding Performance in Biologcal Science for first year medicine course!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

guess it was worth growing stress-induced fungus on my sole last term after allsoaking my plantar-wart-infested feet

breaking down the word : friends in a house watching snow=)

the first time ing fixes a condom on a .....blue plastic willy

2008-10-15T22:02:00.003+01:00

I applied a condom for the first time of my life! on a blue willy, blind-folded, within 25 seconds??? they thought i split the condom, but turned out there were bubbles trapped inside, not pregnant-proved XD

it was really oily, the condom, that is. And I was so surprised that I managed to do it on my first time, guess it's an innate skill init=p

i went for my first Sexpression meeting, it is a society where members are trained to give sex education to 12-14 years old teenager in school. thought i would just join for the laugh of it, totally cool to tell people ' hey by the way, i teach kids about sex ";)see the blue willy stuck on the hand-drawn model on the whiteboard? we were literally groping for it since we were blind folded.

after 4 training sessions, we'll be on the roll! can't wait to start. I have heard some really funny stories of the questions the kids fires, including the likes of ' do u get tuna fish flavour condom?" 'is it alright to have sex with animals?"

and one of the committees said she spent 45 minutes explaining what a period (menstruation) was,and when she asked the class to recap what is a period, a cheeky little boy said ' we have 8 of that during a typical school day'

k la, on a more serious note, we will be teaching about puberty, contraception, sexually transmitted disease ( STD) and self esteem=)

people with learning disability

2008-10-14T22:13:00.003+01:00

we had an interview session with patients with learning disability few days ago. some terminology to get round :

in USA they call it mental retardation
the international term is intellectual disability
in UK they call it learning disability

3 patients gingerly strolled in and sat across me and my classmates. We havent a clue what we were supposed to ask them, this was very different from our usual history taking coz we already know what the diagnosis is( not really the exact diagnosis though)

i cringed at the first question my classmate asked : "So would you like to tell us about your DISABILITY?"
manz, i felt like leaving the room then and there. the free usage of the word ' disability' in the face of a patient with learning disability was unnerving, we might as well have asked: " so , tell me, are u like, retarded?"

the lecturers really should have brief us on what to say or ask or give some general directions. i felt so helpless then. i settled for observing how i felt listening to those questions, what questions my classmates carefully formulated, and think about how we could have performed better. better than busy wallowing in helplessness.

luckily things picked up abit after the initial palpable awkwardness. i guess that is the benefits of learning in a group, learning from peers. it was actually quite a good experience, good exposure for us to deal with patients like this in a safe and friendly environment, where patients chosen were not emotionally unstable and are there for us to learn, to figure out for ourselves the best way to approach such patients.

first flu jab!!!!!!!

2008-10-09T19:06:00.004+01:00

i know this sounds silly, to make a big fuss over such a minor thing,
but stillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

i gave an 81 years old patient my very first flu jab (injection)!!!!
it's literally just push out the air bubble, then stab at the patient's deltoid (shoulder muscle), and that's it. my GP was chatting with the patient while i stood with the syringe ready in hand, eyeing the GP for instructions, but she did not even winked or bat an eyelid to give me the green light.

and the patient stopped talking and turned to me ' you're not done yet?"

>< i am scared of injections but i am definitely not scared of jabbing people muhahahhahaha

1st day of 2nd year

2008-09-29T21:37:00.003+01:00

1st day of 2nd year.

right.

i got locked in my room.IN MY ROOM!!! not locked out.wtf! what a way to start my 1st day of school=( after trying the key on the lock for 20 minutes, my housemates came to my rescue. I threw my keys out the window for Steph and Ei Mon to try unlock my room door from the outside.

we tried applying lubricating grease, jiggling the lock, calling the landlord, everything, but i am still locked in my room ont the first day of uni. we even considered breaking down the door, but it was a strong, unbreakable fire door.

must be karma getting back on me for killing a spider in Steph's room yesterday=(

i am still shaking when i wolfed down my breakfast and dashed off to uni. how? me, the unatheletic Ing climbed out of my window, edged along the roof tile, and through the window of the room next to mine. My room is only on the 1st floor though.

after all we have been through, the landlord came in the afternoon and texted me "the door unlocked on my first try, but i changed a new lock just in case"

see? i think it's the spider that is getting back on me. bah. bad bad day.

2008-09-28T14:30:00.000+01:00

i lost my old hotmail account(housefly9515@hotmail.com), please re-add me on housefly9515@hotmail.co.uk. for msn messenger. thanks=)

2008-09-27T19:40:00.003+01:00

i knew we were in trouble when the dog sniffed Steph's luggage with too much enthusiasm.

Ironically this was what went through my mind when I was on the plane : hmm, I wonder just how long can my luck last till. I have never been picked out of the crowd to have my luggages inspected at the airport. And I always made sure to hide my bak gua, bak hu, sausages, ikan bilis among my clothes.

i think I forgot to touch wood. WHERE THE HELL WAS I TO FIND WOOD ON A PLANE????

When the officer called me aside to open up my luggage i was like, shit, there goes all my precious meat floss and sambal=( i thought i could get away by playing stupid.

" why did u lie? do u know we could have suspended your visa?"
gulp. ya why did i risk my visa for some stupid food. i was scared shitless. and then i had this ornamental samurai sword i brought as a present for my friend. " do u think it is a good idea to bring this?"

bah. i got a sweet warning letter. if i ever dare to bring meat into uk again, i will be prosecuted. wah scared loh. bad bad day=( i hate it when i am bounded with so many rules. i hate it when i got caught breaking the rules. (* note this is different from ' i hate it when i break the rules)

but seriously. to break the rules just to satisfy my appetite. how pathetic can that be. i wont do it again*bows head in repentance*

Damn u stupid dog. Next time, I am going to fill my luggage full of my super smelly socksss. nah! smell that!!!!

Book Review : A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers - by Xiaolu Guo

2008-09-22T14:23:00.003+01:00

Yes, I read a dictionary. Aren’t I a smart nerd.

This is a novel written in the form of a China girl’s self-constructed dictionary. It is a collection of new vocabulary she has learned from her English language school in London and from her everyday life as an international student. For each new word, she makes notes of its meaning, and aptly weaves in her thoughts or accounts of her encounters.

What drew me to this book was its description of how a Chinese student struggled to adapt to a new life in England. It highlights the essence of the difference between West and East, and the confusion this stirs. This sort of hit a chord deep within me, it was like reading a story of myself.

Of English food – “I confusing again when I look at ‘whipped cream’ on the menu…how people whip cream? I see a poster somewhere near Chinatown. On poster naked woman only wears leather boots and leather pants, and she whipping naked man kneeling down under legs. So a English chef also whipping in kitchen?’

She wrongly heard the word ‘ fizzy water’ as ‘ filthy water” and was appalled when the waiter offered her that. “ I opening bottle, immediately lots of bubble coming out. How they putting bubbles in water?”

The book started off with really poor English, and gradual improvements as one reads on, to simulate the process of learning a second language. The English was sooooo Chinese-y! I couldn’t help laughing when she pointed out the typical mistakes that us Chinese make :

“gosh verb is just crazy. Verb has verbs, verbed, verb-ing. And verbs has three types of mood too : indicative, imperative, subjunctive. Why so moody?”

“ jeans are pairs says the teacher. But, everybody know jeans or trousers always one thing, you can’t wear many jean, four years old baby know that. Why waste ink adding ‘ s’? ”

“people say “I’m going to go to the cinema”. Why there two ‘go’ for one sentence? Why not enough to say one ‘go’? ”

Some of the difference of West and East values that she pointed out were spot on :

The girl’s English boyfriend protested “ I’m always paying for you. In the West, men and women are equal. We should split food and rent. ”

Girl says “of course you must pay. You are man. When couple is live together, woman loses social life automatically. She stays at home do cooking and washing. And after she have kids, even worse. She loses financial independence.”

Though I find this more true for the conservative Chinese women of the older generation than modern young ladies.

“ An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold (一寸光阴一寸金,寸金难买寸光阴). Chinese believed time was the most expensive thing in the world. When I was a teenager I dared not waste just even twenty minutes to play around. But here, in this country, people spent whole afternoon having a pot of tea, and a whole night to drink beers at pub. If life is a race against time, why people pay so much attention on tea and beer?”

This I find very true. I really cannot understand how the brits party away, getting drunk every week. Though not all of them are like that. They club for charity, they club after a demonstration on the street. Even professors club during fresher’s week. It was this new scenario that made me realised just how rigid a person I was, always refraining from entertainment during term times.

Though thanks to my sensei, nowadays I would stop to scrutinize the social norms I was so used to, to judge for myself what is right and wrong. I should not just say, oh, clubbing is bad, drinking is bad, just because we were taught so. ( but I still don’t like clubbing or drinking XD)

Back to the book. The only thing I don’t like about this book is, there was way too much explicit description of sex.

Anyhow, I shall end this review with my favourite part of this book.

“ ‘ Love’ this English word : like other English words, it has tense. ‘Loved’, ‘will love’ or ‘have loved’. All these specific tenses mean Love is a time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exists in a particular period of time. In Chinese, love is ‘爱’. No past and future. Love is existence, holding past and future. ”

2008-09-19T13:51:00.002+01:00

they say women can multi-task. How not true that is. I'll prove to you why :

I was parking at Billions to get my brother some milk. I still suck at parking. With utmost concentration, I aligned my car with the adjacent Kancil. Just when I triumphantly accomplished my task and pushed the door open, the car gave way and slowly slided forward.

I think my heart skipped a beat. seriously. but at the next beat i grabbed the brake handle and yanked it.

i NORMALLY always remember to pull the handbrake, it's already programmed into my subconscious driving mode. But put me in an unfamiliar situation and things just go haywire.

Nevermind. I am going to earn lots of money, be rich , and hire a personal chauffuer.

2008-09-05T08:16:00.003+01:00

pornography today!

*leery grin*
*
*
*
*
*
*

subject of interest : the tiny little penis and two scrotums of a 38 weeks-old fetus. a male fetus that is
modes of viewing : ultrasound scan
i still can't help marvel at how the doctor could tell that 3 random blobs of white on the screen is a penis flanked by two scrotum.

2008-08-19T21:13:00.000+01:00

Reduction of anterior shoulder dislocation.
The traditional method involves exerting force using one’s extended leg on patient’s armpit while tugging on patient’s arm.
*rubs hand in glee*

I wonder why the medical assistant (MA) and the nurses were donning paper masks. Anyhow I got distracted from that query when the houseman and MA started a tug-of-war :

The Hippocratic method, a bit different from the one I've learned. I hovered at the edge of all the action to take a good look.

Then the nurse ( also paper masked) spelled something to the paper mask-less houseman
: “ Doctor, t-i-b-i ”
blank look from the doctor. " t-i-v-i?"

A week at the hospital and I am still baffled at the amount of acronyms these people manage to invent, and more amazingly, remember them. Needless to say, most of the time I have no idea what they are talking about.

So just when I was attempting yet another futile guess of what the acronym stood for, it dawned on me ( and the houseman) –the nurse meant TB, this patient not only has a dislocated shoulder, he has tuberculosis too!!!!!

Fuck.

2008-08-19T20:47:00.000+01:00

Haggling.
Like that of morning wet markets or pasar malams.
In the clinic.
Of patients with doctors.
To amputate or not to.

Somehow it reminds me of U mobile’s funny adverts (flexible prepaid plan):

“neh, nak teh tarik boleh?” ( hey, I want milk tea can?)
“boleh!” (cann!)
“neh, nak setennnngah gelas boleh?” ( hey, I want half glass of milk tea can?)
“tak boleh” ( cannot!)

Or

“I want a comestic surgery for my hand can?”
“can”
“ I only want my fourth finger done exactly like this can?” * indicates to picture where fourth finger bears a diamond ring*
“cannot!”

Or

“Uncle have to amputate your big toe lah before the gangrenous tissues spread the infections to the rest of your leg”
“ half a toe cannot ah?
“ can I not keep the toe?”
“will it grow back?”
“Uncle you’re not a lizard lah”

Somehow the last scenario is not as funny as the previous two.

2008-08-16T14:07:00.005+01:00

it's eery how our subconscious thoughts can be revealed in ways that even ourselves may not realise. I've been caught off guard once, by my friend who casually picked off a piece of scrap paper. A scrap paper with words scribbled absent-mindedly, furiously, repetitively, words that were never meant for anyone to chance upon

and when i saw this among my mother's stack of calligraphy scrap papers, i knew that even my mum is swept up in Malaysia's battle for the Olympic badminton gold medal. bet daddy is green with jealousy=p

shine for malaysia! ( no u singaporean turtle i DID not copy ur song )

hospital attachment

2008-08-14T10:05:00.002+01:00

so finally i get to play my part as an irritating, nothing-better-to-do first year medic tagging in the hospitals ("what are you, a first year student, doing here?") after a month's waiting.

day 1 - spoke to hawt 5th year student from Cambridge
day 2 - spoke to hawt 3rd year student from penang dental college
day3 -spoke to hawt MO

maybe it isnt such a bad choice i've made to pursue a medical degree. but i know for sure that i have brains for choosing orthopadics for my attachment, since my future housemate told me she was the only female student in orthopaedics.

sensei's words of wisdom

2008-08-04T04:29:00.007+01:00

Are you one to think that meditation over time would bring you results

perhaps waiting an apple to bring about the gravity of the situation

**********************************************

Are you one who lives in the future that you fear a decision you'll regret, scared to laugh at yourself

one in the past fearful of the next wrong step

***********************************************

Are you one who wishes to make an answer that the world, significant others agree

one who is uncertain of her own

are you one who refrains from setting the limits to your world and delaying the inevitable until you are forced to?

dignity

2008-07-20T07:18:00.001+01:00

I was at the fruit stall with mum. A malay lady handed 2 kiwi fruits and some apples to the shop owner. “RM10” said the owber without batting an eyelit.

“rm2 per kiwi? Not rm1.50?” stammered the malay lady. The owner ignores her totally and turned to serve her next customer.

Suddenly I see myself once again, bowing my head low while I weighed the fresh goods in my palms at the open market. Bowing my head low to avoid the annoyed glares of English vendors.

“don’t touch my potatoes if u are not going to buy them.”

I suppose their hostility are not to be blamed either if people once sneak off with their goods.

week3

2008-07-11T11:47:00.003+01:00

lost my cool again, this time in public. gee when will i ever learn=(

went to Seberang Jaya Hospital on Monday to sort out my attachment application. Since summer break is the peak season, i applied really early, in fact too early for them to have closed my case ( or i prefer to say : they lost it) really irritated coz it might mean i wont get the placement this summer.

I met 3 ex JSCO members at the HR office waiting for their attachment allocation=) Han Han just came back from Russia, she spotted my Chinese Orchestra t shirt before she realised it was me. She is starting her 4th year in October though she is only a year my senior.

The other two were erhu juniors studying in Concord College, uk. meeting 3 jsco members in just one morning at the hospital. not to mention half of my form 5 classmates are studying medicine as well.

boy, am i going to be jobless when i come out to practice.

trying to explain spm maths to a little brother reminds me how much i loathed maths back in high school, and how i suck (present tense) in maths. explaining how sperm + ovum = zygote ( 1 +1 = 1, how can i not suck in maths u tell me???huh???) is so much more fun^^

catching up

2008-07-05T16:57:00.004+01:00

with Yunn Hounng at Sunway Carnival, my favourite new haunt
coz it's one of the two places (besides Jit Sin) that i am capable of driving to without mum's supervision.
and I dont park at Sunway,
I park at Billion Supermarket's parking lots next to Sunway coz i dont have to wreck my nerve manouvring up the winding paths leading to the parking lots;
the malay guy in shades giving out parking ticket will come over and instruct me how to steer my car in between a proton and a waja or whatever cars that happened to sandwich my mother's wira ( after getting exasperated watching me attempting to park for 15 minutes)

everyone is leaving good old Penang, leaving me behind when i am finally back a true free soul, well at least for three months='(
i love those who fill in the awakward blanks in conversations themselves, without missing a beat, sparing me the embarrassment and guilt for losing track :

me : " so you are currently studying...."
x :" xxx course"
me : " right, so you are studying xxx course at....."
x : " at xxx University in xxx state / country"

yummy princess-y cupcakes from Phey Yee=) aren't they a pretty sight to behold? I dont get blue ones coz the white, uncoloured ones are healthier ( us being hypochondriac XD)

had a good chat over a cup of coffee at , no prize for guessing where=p

and to help me survive the boredom that is gradually seeping in ( though it's only week 2 into my 3 months summer break), Phey Yee lend me this book of hers : My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I haven't came across a book that i just cant seem to put it down except in between meals since the likes of harry potter ( or maggie smith's Digestive System---KIDDING!!!)

anyway, it's about this 13 years old girl, Anna who files a lawsuit against her parents for making her a donor for her leukemic sister.

One particular scene that touches me was when Kate who has leukemia refused to have a trip to the mall coz she was self-conscious of being bald ( aftermath of chemo), and her mum shaves herself bald too to share the humilation Kate has to bear.

and when Kate had Anna( her younger sis) fill her urine sample cup with apple juice. Kate then holds the cup against the light when the offending nurse returns to collect the sample."hmm seems abit cloudy, better filter it through again' and drinks the "urine" to the horror of the nurse

S1 Kerachut trip

2008-06-27T09:44:00.006+01:00

the very next day after i touch penang soil at 7pm i went off to Penang's National Park with my high school classmates.you see, Science class people have brains, we dont use cheapskate umbrellas, we are far beyond thatand we use our brain on cards, contemplating what obscenities to scream next when you have shit cards
some love to sleep no matter where they are...be it by the beach.. or at the barbeque
and this is the consequence of over sleeping - inevitable death. and your science-savy classmates will cut you up for post-mortem with their scissor aka fingerssome love to pangsai in the jungle, free supply of unprocessed organic toilet paper.coz we knowthat the jungle is so pristinely clean that there is not a single fly to annoy ur defeacating process (which you usually find in polluted areas)pole dancing in the jungle where you wont be accused of corrupting youngsters mindanyway cutting the crap, i seriously didnt know "a short hike" will amount to one hour and a half of torturous labour=( i even turned up in slippers. god i was in for a nasty shock when i had to use all 4 limbs to steady myself, ease my body down slopes and slippery mud path. had i know beforehand this would be a full fledge jungle trekking i would had told yin shan " i'll meet u guys at the beach" instead of toiling for almost 2 hours for that patch of blue.but yeah, proud to say we made it to the sea!!! and took the boat back ( i dont think i could have go through that ordeal twice) the boat trip cost RM100 so it was RM10 each.we had barbeque at 11pm-2am

since it was pitched black lian xing served as the human torch holder illuminating our bbq pit.

extinguishing the fire
lian xing's nephew, naughty little baby, but it was fun to see how the boys are being toyed around by this little monkey XD

1st year officially ends=)

2008-06-21T00:28:00.003+01:00

final's result is scheduled to be published online this morning 10.30am. planned to wake at 10.30am prompt so that i dont have to stare at the ticking clock. so stayed up really late.but cold + late night coffee + result-phobia ( resits-phobia ) = restless tossing and turning.

of all times to mess up the uni website they chose today. heck.

overall ok la. let's just say i'll get my 3 months full summer break=)

went for curry dinner with steph & jeremy. the waiter didnt give us back our change so i went up to him :

waiter : " oh i assumed the change were tips so i didnt give them back to u.."
me : * persistent expression without eye contact*
waiter : "okok i will give u your change"

2.55pound i can buy another decent meal d hor, i squirm at anything priced over 1.50pound, no way am i giving out a 2.55 pounds tip

i guess my facial epidermis has thicken over the years. it can be embarrassing at times. my encounters with hostility in similar conditions has led me to brace myself for humilation or coldness ( eg :asking for free cardboxes, asking for directions ).i'm just purely scared of interacting with the ang mohs. When i'm actually received with a kind smile i am taken aback.

u have no idea how much a simple smile can make one's day.

Eating in Edinburgh3

2008-06-20T00:37:00.000+01:00

FRIED MARS BARS!!!!!

a less known specialty of Edinburgh, only known by insiders! My Malaysian senior, Analine recommended this. Only available at kebab shops in Edinburgh!the devil of all fattening food. see the caramel oozing out of the fried mars bars??? As it is fried at a high temperature, the chocolate and the caramel are half melted, so it doesnt stick to the teeth like the normal mars bars do. Imagine drinking semi solid melted hot chocolate.

Fish & Chips at The World's End.

supposedly the best fish and chips in town. self acclaimed by the shop though. but kevin went back for a second serving before we leave edinburgh so it must be a five star fish and chips.
Ramsay's Fish & Chips are said to be the best in the UK. but kev said the world's end beats Ramsay's. Ramsay's F & C taste great when it is hot on the table but when it cools down, the oil soaks the batter and it tastes of,well, oil? jelak lah!

but the world's end's fish is so soft that is melts and dissolves like cloud in your mouth while its outer layer is a perfect crisp.

The best Fish & Chips are in Aberdeen according to Jeremy. but to travel all the way up north for fish & chips..hmm.

The World's End

4 High Street, EH11TB

Telephone: 0131 556 3628

Opening hours, normal: 11.00am to 1.00am

The Elephant House - Birthplace of Harry Potter
This was where J.K Rowling would order a cup of coffee so she could have a table all to herself for the day, creating a world of fantasy for readers from worldwide, playing with the fate of the boy with a thunderbolt scar on his forehead=)

moving

2008-06-19T09:05:00.002+01:00

*wipes forehead*one worry crossed off my worry-list.
My landlord's daughter came to give us a free ride. We will be living with her next term, looking forward to learning some Italian cookings from Vitty.

She just inspired me to consider Orthopaedics as a career. I was asking her how was her 1 year intercalated degree in Scotland : "...I thought I was in the wrong class when I stepped inside, I was the only female student there.....most of them are consultants who found doing a Medical Science in Orthopaedics helpful..."

Eating in Edinburgh2

2008-06-16T00:41:00.005+01:00

Gaelic Coffee okok by then you would have noticed it's always Kevin had this Kevin had that. The train ticket to Edinburgh was a friggin SIXTY TWO pounds=( that's why Steph didnt join us in the end. We've been spending alot on travelling lately. so i basically packed sandwiches everyday to save cost.

So the coffee was a treat from Kev. Gaelic refers to a language origin, like Irish is to Ireland. Gaelic coffee is coffee with Scotch Whiskey, my experience with Irish coffee at Penang's The Ship made this alcoholic coffee relatively palatable. not too bitter so to say as one would expect from alcohol.

White Pudding

ok to be fair i bought this - from an indian kebab shop where u can get a cheaper versions of the scottish food. It's a pig blood free variation of the black pudding. Kevin was saying we should blend both black and white pudding together to make a Michael Jackson pudding. took me awhile to get the joke.

love the oaty taste of the white pudding, lots of barley in it so it's high in fibre and very chewy.

Roti Jala

no, roti jala is not a Scottish food. It's Malaysian! But I've just came across this dish when I was browsing through the blog, Rasa Malaysia. And Cho Ee was showing me his roti jala making tool. So he decided to make roti jala for this christian fellowship picnic that evening...and I shamelessly decided to stay just one more night to see the "legendary" roti jala in the making.

3 spoon fulls of flour + 1 egg, and sprinkles of chili powder, tumeric powder, salt and cornflour. add water till its runny.

then draw the number " 8" and finish it off with a circle. the drips of batter should be interjoined so that they will peel off as a whole when cooked. dont even have to add oil to the wok.fold it in halves twice, and voila!served with daal or any curry ( ready cooked curry from Sainsbury)met2 Taiwanese cute girls at the picnic. Hui Yu is doing Musical Therapy, I was kinda intrigued and pestered her with questions. Basically the patient is given the choice of a range of instrument and plays whatever he/she wants. It doesnt matter even if the patient does not know how to play an instrument, all they have to do is express themselves, even if this means playing a nonsensical tune.

the therapist's job is to improvise the patient's playing and try to make a connection through the music. They do not attempt to interpret the patient's playing. And the treatment regime varies with individual patient.

For autistic children, they think in a fixed pattern, they need security of a routine lifestyle. So the treatment aims to increase their flexibility, by playing them variations of a particular favourite song that the child is familiar with. ( some background research is required here to identify such a song.)

would have loved to learn more from her. music therapy. hmm. only 5 universities in the UK offers this course. Hui Yu is studying in Queen Margerette University.

Eating in Edinburgh

2008-06-15T22:53:00.007+01:00

I shall kick start my Edinburgh trip entries with a review of the food=) look out for the FRIED MARS BAR featured in the next entry!

Kevin called his british flatmates for travelling advices while we were doing our pre-travelling internet surfing, and these was the must-try list they gave : 1. Haggis, Neeps and Tatties 2. Black pudding. Both are typical traditional Scottish food.

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties

I was curious what these weird sounding dishes were, so i googled it up. BIG MISTAKE, the description left me gaping in horror :

Haggis - sheep's heart, lung and liver minced with onion, oatmeal, spices, etc and boiled in animal's stomach.
Neeps - mashed turnips
Tatties - mashed potatoes

disgusting it may sound, but I was ready to give it a try. I am sure it's one of those things like durian is to Malaysians and Smelly Tofu is to Taiwanese. So I was ecstatic when i saw a sign indicating "Free Haggis Sample " at the Edinburgh Castle. Couldn't really make a judgement from that meagre small bite.

Had a proper traditional H.N.T at a pub. I stole a few mouthfuls from Kevin's plate. It was surprisingly ok, the spice was so strong that it masked any foul smell of the intestines. The potatoes and turnips were tasteless on their own. I reckon the best way to savour H.N.T is a mouthful of equal proportions of all 3.

The concoction of spice was the essence of this dish, contrary to its usual role in enhancing the taste of any other dishes. But the spices and seasonings themselves cannot stand as a dish. You cannot, say, eat cinnamon or pepper or ginger on its own. Hence the minced intestined gave this dish it's substantial form.

So why would people bother to eat something that doesn't have it's own distinct taste value and instead saturate it with add ons (spices)? This is because Haggis was a dish for the poor, made from thrown away parts of the sheep. Resolving hunger came before taste bud satisfaction.

Black Pudding

Us asians should be ok with this dish as it is a Scottish version of a pig blood-based dish. Black pudding is typically served as part of a traditioal Scottish breakfast ( the usual boring sausage, baked beans, toast, egg ). It was well passed breakfast hour so Kevin had to do with just a Black Pudding in rolls. Again it's the spice that dominates. I love the oatmeats in it though.

Lil Piggys in Bath - can u spot the pigs??

2008-06-15T22:36:00.005+01:00

Char Siew welomed us at Bath's train station. It was the first thing that we caught sight of the moment we leaped out of the train into Yellow Bath. we thought, hmm, a cute random pig statue.

and we spotted another pig at the Roman Bath.
and another..
WHAT'S WITH THE PIGSSSSS???????
they love us, that must be it, why else are they stalking us all over the city
you turn around the corner and

.

.

.

.

.

..

BOO! gotcha!

says Pig-casso the world reknown Spanish neoclassical artist

King Bladud's Pig in Bath is a summer 2008 public art event to celebrate Bath and its origin.

King Bladud contracted leprosy 瘋病、癩病when he was studying in Athens. Flawed, he left his throne in disguise as a swineherd (pigman). His pigs contracted his disease. They were however miraculously cured when they rolled in the hot mud around Bath's spring. King Bladud followed suit and was cured too. In gratitude for his cure, King Bladud founded a city at Bath.

There will be 100 life size pigs in Bath and which will all be autioned in October.

bak gut teh at jeremy's

like what kevin said, all we want is a home. a home in a foreign country where the heart is
at it's lonely-est ( if there is such a word). it took me a year, but i've found mine=)

true javier, they worship my statue in Bath- the head of Minerva

as for the pigs...people worship Minerva's side kick as well,who happens to be stationed in some barren land in NS. XD

Bath

2008-06-11T21:38:00.007+01:00

went on a daytrip to Bath with Steph and Kevin, with Steph's 2 friends, Stef and Kenny as our tour guide , luckeeeee! Bath had the atmosphere of a historical town, swirls of yellow building welcomed us as the train eased into Bath.while waiting for Steph's friend we wandered around the vicinity and saw this crowd in front of St Abbey's church, entranced by these 2 nutters...bbq balls anyone? no kidding, those were fire-lit torches, burning HOT. these twosome street performers were drop dead funny!!!this was right in front of a posh restaurant serving english tea - The Pump Room, those kind where u get violinists playing while diners sip on their tea elegantly, with their pinkies haughtily pointing into the air. talk about stark contrast!

they literally stripped naked ( in G string XD) and wagged their ass at the tea house announcing this as "The view gets better each day" stuntout of nowhere one of them brandished a whip and prompted a tourist to strike a pose. He then grabbed her camera, enquiring her marriage status, cheekily took a snapsot of the inside view of his G string ( i swear i am not lying) and declared " well, explain this to your husband!"they were acrobats + clowns, this was one of their stunts, the thin guy was (pretending ) to stabilize himself using his butt on the lamp post

at one point when they balanced themselves upside down on a portable stunt rack, the thin guy said " I know what these people are thinking, they think : i bet the fat one cant do this "

i dont normally give alms in uk ( 1 pound = rm 7!!! nah) but that day was an exception, especially when they mentioned that it aint that warm to be entertaining only in your undies in england. We complain of robbers, pick pockets, but i guess we do have to stop and think : if we don't give people like this a chance to earn their money, who are we to complain when we're robbed? next stop was the Roman Bath, the main attraction in Bath.
People in the olden days come to public baths to socialise ( they can spend hours soaking in the hot bath while chatting away their time) or for therapeutic purposes.

The signature green hue of the algae-filled water is due to the absence of the roof that used to shield the bath. If you look closely, u will see there are two distinct colour on the pillar, the orange line marking the original water level ( orange due to the iron content)

not much of the original Bath was left. the interesting thing about the architecture is there are two layers to it. When the Romans invaded Bath, they added their own designs on top of the original Medieval pillars and walls.

This wishing well used to be the cold bath. Bathers would take a cold plunge after a boiling hot bath, a bit like our三温暖. The twinkling sparks are coins thrown in by well wishers.

On the contrary, people in the olden days used to throw in offerings( gems, engraved coins), pleading god Minerva to curse theives who stole their personal belongings from the changing room while they were bathing.

I thought people pray for blessings???

2008-06-07T21:24:00.001+01:00

just returned from Edinburgh and I'm exhausted.
enough travelling, i'l have to start packing next week=(box hunting soon
cant wait to go home!!!

cadbury world

2008-06-02T23:13:00.013+01:00

Linh came for a day after my finals, since she and Steph are chocoholics, we visited Cadbury World, which is one of Birmingham's top tourist attractions. I've asked people who have been there for their comments, and most boys went " b.o.r.i.n.g place ". I guess it would have been a major letdown if I were to expect something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, like chocolate rivers flowing through patches of candy-made-grasses.
Cadbury World is located in Bournville. Bourne refers to little stream, Ville meaning village in French. In those days anything in French was in vogue, hence giving birth to the name Bournville - village with a river flowing through it. We had to take a train to Bournville station, note the railings, lamposts are purple in colour to match the theme of cadbury. I didnt realise that till Steph pointed it out.Bournville was established based on the idealism of a Garden Village. The factory was to be built in a green environment. It was to be a residential area for both the employers and employees. The Cadbury brothers built many fascilities to benefit the workers, e.g swimming pools, schools, medical centres. It was not just a factory, it was a self-contained, thriving town.

The Cadbury brother's were the pioneers to Saturday half-day holidays and for closing the factory on Bank Holidays. This was a great transition from the oppressive working conditions in The Victorian Industrial Revolution. John Cadbury started out as a tea and coffee trader in Birmingham, offering alternatives to alcohol which was believed to be the root of all evil then. Drinking chocolate came later as a sideline product and was a hit after his effort to introduce it to the market. The Cadbury brothers then went on to create chocolate bars, travelling as far as to Switzerland to perfect their production techniques.

After countless experiments playing around with different combinations of ingredients, amount of water, temperature and etc, they developed the best selling Cadbury Dairy Milk. Each half pound of Cadbury Dairy Milk contains one and a half cup of fresh milk ( not powder creamer).A creme egg modelled car at the entrance. Creme eggs is a variation of easter chocolate eggs with milk chocolate shell enveloping a white and yellow fondant filling ( supersaturated sucrose solution of a creamy consistency). Needless to say the white and yellow filling resembles egg albumen and egg yolk. I bought some to share with my friends over easter=) i was soooooo surprised to see the egg-like interior after my friend took a bite.
ok enough of boring history that i can manage to recall from my tour and with a lil help from the cadbury website. the tour was basically a a stroll down man made jungle treks and historical streets aiming on introducing visitors to the history of chocolate. There were a couple of short theatre shows with shaking seats ( to give us a feel of how the cocoa beans must have felt when they were being sieved in the machines?)

and also a peak at the machines used in the chocolate production. k i found this kinda boring..i was wandering absent mindedly waiting for the free chocolates they are supposed to give out at the end of the tour
wall adorned with all the cadbury brands they developed over the years. Cadbury chocolate bars with Turkish delight ( i only got to know this after watching Narnia), black forest, shortbread crumbles, caramel... the list goes on.
and we get to try writing icing, but with chocolate
the chocolate village model from which they filmed a chocolate animation advertisement
an interactive floor where visitors chased after creme eggs. once u stamp on a wrapped chocolate, it will unwrap to reveal the flavour of chocolate in it.want a taste of chocolate model of me? found this uber cool! we stood in front of a camera and they transformed the snapshot into a chocolate model on screen ( read ON SCREEN, not a substantial chocolate bar where u can chew my head off) and and AND.....*drum rolls* the highlight of the day which I've been patiently waiting for - a teeny weeny miserable small cup of liquid gooey chocolate with shortbread crumbles. You get to choose from the bar a range of toppings : gummy bears, chocolate rice, marshmallow etc.

well, in an ideal world they wouldnt exactly invite u to plunge into a chocolate pool, gulping mouthful and mouthful of chocolate would they? at least we each received a one pound worth of voucher to shop for chocolates.

entrance fee : 10 pounds for students

call 08454503599 for ticket reservation as the queue is absoultely mad on public holidays or weekends.

http://www.cadburyworld.co.uk/en/cworld

2008-06-01T12:16:00.003+01:00

i will be very grateful if people out there can point out my grammatical mistakes or wrong usage of words. it's high time i buckle up to improve my english.

there are times i feel so frustrated when i am at lost with words to express myself through english. the last straw came when i got my 1st C in my life, ever, for my Community Based Medicine, and the feedback comment went " poor english"

but yup=)i will accept that as a challenge, ahhhhh MUST JIA YOU!!!

Kevin said my essay is like 鸡肉和猪肉,中间夹着面线
sounds delicious eh?
translation : my flow of thought is all jumbled up, points just pop out of no where incoherently

so ya, javier, fire away when you're free!!!! it's not often that u get permission to suan me all you like.

Stratford-upon-avon - 1st part

2008-06-01T11:16:00.009+01:00

The last time i flew back to Malaysia alone, i met this China businessman at Brums ( shorthand for Birmingham) International Airport and he was showing me pictures of his trip to William Shakespeare's hometown. I cant remember how exactly did i find out that Stratford, which is just an hour's train ride away from Brums was the place he was talking about.

so me, Steph and Kevin hit the road for a daytrip to pay homage to Willy. To save time and trouble, we took the red city sight seeing bus. Includidng3 admission tickets, it cost us 16.50 pounds. It was a double decker, so we had our hairs tossed and turned by the crazy wind while enjoying the rustic view of the country side.

our first stop was Anne Hathaway's cottage, a cottage built in the 14th century. This historical cottage was where Shakespeare's wife lived in before moving out to live with him. William married at the age of 18 to Anne (26 years old).William's father was the Hathaway family's tenant, hence William had plenty of chance to court Anne when he followed his father on his visits to the Hathaway's cottage to settle the debts.

there was this Willow Cabin in the garden, a place for young lovers to mend their broken hearts in Shakespeare's day. Visitors could sit on the wooden bench while listening to recorded recitals of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Roofs in Shakespeare's time were made from straw and the process of making this straw roof by laying down interweaving straws is called Thatching. On average this metal-mesh-strengthen thatch roof can last for 30 years. Thatch roofs do not normally absorb large amount of water, instead, rain water flows down the slope of the roof.

The walls are made of Wattle and Daub. Wattle refers to the framework of interlacing hazel branches while daub is a mixture of sand, water, cow dung, pig blood that is smeared onto the wattle framework to fill in the gaps.

In the 14th century where chimneys were not yet invented, the ceilings were high to allow the smoke to rise above head. With the advent of chimneys, building extra floors was possible, thus increasing the amount of rooms available to accomodate family members.

Next stop was Mary Arden's farm, home to Shakespeare's mother. Initially i was like " can we skip this? farm visits seem b.o.r.i.n.g...." luckily we went ahead and it turned out to be the highlight of the day, even beating Shakespeare's birthplace.flowers blooming in the summer sunThe Shakespeare Birthplace Trust preserved the old farm house well, presenting it as it would have been a hundred years ago. Visitors get to explore every aspect of the farm themselves, there were sign boards almost everywhere explaining the special features and functions of the farm.

The tiny square holes in this Dovecote were pidgeon (dove?)holes where domestic doves nestled. I doubt the British appreciates Swallow nest in those days. The doves were mainly used as a means of communication and also to be served on the table.

my 2oth birthday after finals=)

2008-05-27T00:02:00.009+01:00

water balloon fight!

defending myself as pelts of water-filled balloon rained down

somehow it just reminded me of the playground in mcdonalds
steph and ei monbusy preparing the steamboat, or hot pot as they call it here*note how i love my chinese orchestra jeremy : "where are the meat? only fishball for the night?"
kevin
steph

jeremy

steph having a try on my baby
it's kevin's birthday in late june, we'll all be back home then, so yet another early celebration after ei mon's. the martial art master stabbing his birthday cake.

and the portable electric piano kevin carried from his hostel to mine. he was playing variations of birthday songs on the keyboard followed by the flute, and after much persuasion, i attempted to pull together a birthday song on my erhu

all i can say is i am very touched=)

2008-05-21T18:57:00.002+01:00

吹灭蜡烛许个愿
我想回到中学, 过无忧无虑的日子
永远做爸妈的宝贝女儿
再次和伙伴们奏着华乐的曲子
躲在课本后面偷吃面包
在补习卷上留下口水渍
为抽屉里的蛋糕惊喜
期待邮差的到来
如果可以
我不想长大

happy birthday bro=)

2008-05-20T16:18:00.005+01:00

yeng sis of course have yeng bro^^

mum : your brother ah, typical greeting when he gets on the car after school is " mum, today's exam kanasai" for four consecutive days!我车上现在有四坨粪啦!"

弟弟的经典台词:
"姐,我们家一个妈妈就够了,少咯唆"

2008-05-15T11:30:00.004+01:00

diabetes melitus : > 7mmol/L fasting glucose
>11mmol/L glucose tolerance test

Medicine in society final's question :

How many languages were estimated to be spoken in London in 2006?

ha, like I care, like I go eavesdrop every single conversation at the tube station.

patient : " Doctor doctor, how many languages are in use in London?"
doctor *shrugs* :"beats me"
patient suddenly clutches heart in pain and collapse and dies of heart attack out of contempt for the doctor.

hmm very likely scenario indeed.

finals looming=(

2008-04-25T10:23:00.003+01:00

i shall be back blogging in june, (or when my hand itches and when am bored with my notes' company

yin shan and chen hueh came by today=)

shared some form5 photos, ha, i shant disgrace myself by uploading pictures of me with hideous short hair.

anyway, these are photos of my last few days before easter break. Vietnamese Culture night show themed 'The Enchanted". Invited my Spanish flatmate and her visiting friends to tag along, Pheik Kay and her friends, and my coursemates Olga and her friendsJeremy, Steph, Ei Mon, mevietnamese duet sang by a British girl and a vietnamese boy

Chi Duong in the middle, a vietnamese girl from my college days (! this is for you May if you are reading this=)) it's a small world after all

and ...back to my revision...=(

2008-03-17T23:34:00.002Z

yet another food blog^^this time by a doctor foodie!
ieatishootipost.blogspot.com
i guess that's what i'll be doing in 10 years' time=) when mum is willing to let me loose behind the wheels and when i am earning my own money
but then again there is a limit to how much one can actually spend on cheap da pai dang hawker food

food, food, glorious food*smacks lip*

2008-03-12T17:23:00.002Z

an excerpt from a Medical Education research article :

· Asians comprise 7% of the UK population, they accounted for 19% of medical students in 2001

Five of the whole sample of students said that shy and quiet female Asian students were more likely to be humiliated or ignored by consultants during the ward rounds.

'The consultants do go for more insecure...I mean some students are less able clinically than others, but they tend to pick on those who are obviously less able.... particularly some of the quieter Asian girls, I mean they don't look fragile, but are mentally fragile, you know, they are not very kind of aggressive, a lot of them I think, you know wouldn't take that [humiliation], couldn't take it, they wouldn't know how to deal with it.' (Year 4 'white' female student).

aha..ha...haha..haaaaaaaaa

i'll be so DEAD in my clinical years. my GP thinks i'm dumb and that my english is so bad that i cant follow group discussion when i told her there are times i dont quite catch what the patients are saying. *lick my badly battered ego* i do try to speak up more but somehow i always end up sounding rude, interupting others in mid sentence.

sigh. tired.

Dr Phey Yee's 19th birthday!!!

2008-03-06T19:21:00.005Z

to the author or this happily ever after fairy tale,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! you're one step away from joining us old twenties=p

my best mate in high school who makes the most sumptious cakes and will make a perfect wife ( and a budding doctor). thank you for giving me support when i was going through a hard time settling in first year of uni, for spending your precious time to chat with me online even though u are busy with revisions. i have long since disappeared from msn for this term but i shall be back in summer!!!

and if you're wondering what the happy ending of the fairy tale was :

=)no handsome prince securing his sexy lips around a hot princess's but this is still the best ending ever

by the way, 9515 refers to prisoner number 9515

and the jail was Jit Sin High School^^

and 小朋友is no longer 小朋友 ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dearest Vivien=)

2008-03-02T18:30:00.004Z

To a special girl call Vivien Lo :
Happy 21st birthday!!! good old bosworth days..i miss you very much

remember this picture? u treated me to a movie with your hard earn tea duty money to cheer me up coz i was going through some pretty bad times.

傻傻总是给我鼓励,在我最低落时给我打气

也给了我毕生难忘的第一个生日会

她很咯唆 : 因为她常提醒我做复健

她很长气 : 因为她给我吹了满地的汽球

怎么能忘了你?布告栏贴满你的作品

要加油哦!!! 有一天你一定会成为最棒的药剂师=)

Teddy Bear Hospital!!!

2008-02-24T00:12:00.004Z

http://brumteddies.atspace.com/index.html
Children are often frightened of the unfamiliar, with lab coats, stethoscopes and strange surroundings all contributing.

At Teddy Bear Hospital Birmingham we aim to help the children in a number of ways. These include:

-Teaching the children about various topics, including dental hygiene, healthy eating, road safety and sensory awareness.

-Teddy Clinics. These allow the children to act as parents by bringing their sick teddy bears to the teddy doctors for a 'pawscription'.

I was stationed at the Dental Hygiene with Stephanie=)

basically we hand out toothbrush to kids (" what is this? what do u use it for? how many times should you brush your teeth a day? should u swallow your toothpaste?), and demonstrate the correct way of brushing their teeth. (" err kid, u might want to be gentler on the giant teeth model? *ignores this 啰唆大姐姐and proceed on creating a hold in the teeth model*)

and there's a page where kids get to colour in the sun and moon after brushing their teeth accordingly. ( what colour do you want for your sun? ooh, green? that's, err, .....cool colour for a sun!) and at the end of the 10 minutes session they receive a stamp on their 'teddy passport'

our last "student" of the day, a very cute kid

us : how many times should you brush your times a day?

kid : zillions and zillions of time!!

some kids just amazed you by the amount of knowledge they have for their age, i dont recall knowing calcium is good for teeth at kindergarden @-@

cant wait till i get my own stethoscope, coz then i'll get to be one of the Teddy Doctors- kids will bring their favourite stuff toy to the station, and teddy doctors will simulate a consultation session, a typical session goes like this :

doc : hello there, what is wrong with teddy?
kid : teddy has a tummy ache
doc : and why is that so?
kid : coz teddy ate all the ice cream from the ice cream van
doc : ( *sweat* * listens to teddy's heartbeat and let kid listen too, taps on stethoscope to mimic heartbeat)here's the prescription, you must give teddy lots of hugs and kisses ok?

most of the volunteers are girls ( alright u macho boys! i know it's a very girl-y thing! but u fools, this is such a great oppoturnity to woo girls for being kind hearted)

healthy eating station, my friend ei mong=)
sensory awareness station

Magha Puja

2008-02-17T19:37:00.007Z

Magha Puja, a major Buddhist occasion, celebrates a full moon of the month of Magha when 1,250 Arahant disciples of the Buddha arrived without any prior arrangement at the Bamboo Grove and the Buddha who was living on the Vulture's Peak came down to meet them and recited the Ovada Patimokkha, which includes the well-known summary of what the Buddha taught, 'avoid evil, cultivate good and purify your mind'.

scratch that. in simple terms, it was an eventful day in warwick visiting a temple -The Forest Hermitage

http://www.foresthermitage.org.uk/

which is a cottage situated in the countryside, where participants bring vegetarian dishes to give out on alms round, and get this, to BRTISH MONKS. my jaw was literally touching the floor when pheik kay,the event coordinator, told me that.

well the food was the best part anyway=p most participants were thai people, and the thai food they prepared was amazing!

entrance to the temple

the interior of the temple

the head monk telling the story of the origin of magha puja. we went through the mantra chanting session,the head monk sprinkled holly water on us for blessingqueueing up for alms roundeach of the participants placing portions of food into the monk's bowlThe food kay ( and us layman assistant, me and lily=p) there were herbal tea eggs, fake meatball, and wanton ( with fake meat fillings)!!!
my plate of foodddddd muhahahahha

2008-02-13T10:40:00.003Z

亚州学生(小留学不算,因为他们基本上已洋化,英文教育背景的亦如是)通常都鲜少在课堂上,小组讨论里发言,或者this only applies to me…
一开始自卑感很强烈,尤其当和同学相较自下,我的医学知识少得可怜
And my poor English isn’t helping much..there are times when I get so frustrated when I fail to convey my message across, so much so that I have to refrain myself from bitting my tongue off.
The learning environment here helped much in discarding the inhibition one feels in demonstrating what you know among your peers.

英国同学若知道答案会很大方的说出来,而且是抢着讲.
一个学期过啦,我觉得这短短几个月成长很多,不只课业上-为人处世,安排生活,如何不要被他人影响(因为压力原自于此)
这个学期在课堂上发言的频率增加了很多,也得到同学的肯定
想法已变成 :如果我知道答案，为何不可发言？
努力的付出很需要得到别人的认同
只有自卑的人不断需要从别人口中得到认可
我想是压抑太久,长期被看不起的反射效应
问题是我打从心底瞧不起这样的自己
我讨厌这样争出头的自己

cny dinner by malaysian society and FECX

2008-02-10T23:27:00.000Z

no cny for at least 10 years=( no ang pao, no reunion dinner with my family
but still treated myself to cny dinner with friends from uni=)
pheik kay, my senior from Jit Sin Chinese Orchestra string section, came up from warwick to join us for the malaysian cny dinner~had a great time chatting through the night, if only she's not graduating this year..

kevin managed to bring his british flatmates along. great feat, my flatmates usually decline my offer to sample my chinese (attempts of) cooking. hmm, maybe its not the chinese element that they dont like, maybe it's just my cooking that puts people off..

we were pretty amused when the restaurant sold the brits 绍兴酒when they requested for rice wine for drinking. mum says there are 绍兴酒for drinking purposes but i guess it has been imprinted in my mind that 绍兴酒is good with cabbage in pans rather than in cups

and the boys started challenging each other to chew on the fish eyeballs

eating chinese food with the britons is quite an experience. they were questioning about the century eggs and widen their eyes in bewilderment when i retorted "ya it's just a 100 years old egg", or " balls of hair they picked up from the barbers " for 发菜(seaweed), " i didnt know potatoes had leaves!" 树苗

i wore my pesco chinese orchestra uniform for the FECX ( Far Eastern Connection) cny dinner=)

had a great time but am pretty broke now...

2008-02-09T17:58:00.001Z

omg, I LOVE THIS BLOG!!!!! came across it while googling for pineapple tart recipe
Lily's Wai Sek Hong ( dunno what that means in hokkien, can anyone tell me pls, my hokkien sucks)
http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/

written by a Malaysian ( i presume, since the recipe was mainly Malaysian dishes) living in US, so the recipe are improvised for oversea asians with limited food ingredients at hand. and the best part about it is the extensive use of microwave for lazy bums like me^^

am going to try out the recipe one by one, oo lala~

i cant believe how auntie or housewife-sy i sound these days, my conversations with friends typically goes :

so what-cha cooking for dinner tonight / the weekend?
oooh, i tell u , tesco is selling cheapppppp apples/ 2 for 1 salmon this week
nah, go get eggs from the wet market its 10pence cheaper than tesco

Steph & Jeremy's bday=)

2008-02-08T23:40:00.000Z

early celebration for steph and jeremy's birthday at nandos~

jeremy,kun,steph, kevin, me , ei mong

yes, i am the ever diligent studious me with my thick fat textbook
went to Create Your Own Bear shop while waiting for the food to be served to get steph a teddy, we called it the cute frankenstein teddy : ei mong pumped cotton stuffing into the teddy, we all recorded a birthday wish which the bear will play upon pressing his belly. it was really funny coz after we all screamed "We love you stephanie" we each wished her happy birthday in turns and kevin wind it up with a "bye"

teddy gets a birth certificate
another brilliant idea of kevin, note the full name
obviously jeremy is honoured that the cute FEMALE teddy in dress is named after him

mug imprint : i'll ring if i'm horny

there's a bicycle bell on the mug handle, can hear the ringing sound from miles away. ah, perfect gift for our ah kua jeremy

kevin and kun having a great time dressing up jeremyU TELL ME IS THIS GUY AH KUA OR NOT??

kevin drinking the super hot chili sauce straight out of the bottle=.='''i'm surprised he didnt spit fire

apparently u can get drunk even with chili sauce (as long as its hot enough..)

birthday drink for birthday boy, no alcohol!!

just some really hot chili sauce..and soy saucekevin with his devil look, my god, he looks like he's about to poison somebodylots of cokeand a sprinkle of salt

and he absoultey loved the cocktail we concocted for him, NOT

aiya, better than the egg yolk, steamboat, soy sauce, chili cocktail jf had for his bday

new busy term^^

2008-01-25T23:32:00.000Z

stephanie, me and ei mong, asean medic's curry night out=)

this was in front of my flat, students were running for the hall representative election. beats boring poster with memorundum coz i dont think people actually read the posters. well at least i never do.
and i found this on the dessert aisle in Tesco, it is an EDIBLE cake, *ahem*
mum's artwork on dad's feet using iodine. i wanna be a pediatrician who paints smile-y faces onto teary kido's wound=)

1 of our anatomy models, its a section through the head where the inner structures are visible, should have taken a pic from the inside
us girls were outraged by this, a childish boy fiddled with the lecture laptop to generate this desktop background on the lecture slides. our lecturer for the day was late for half an hour, and it turned out she had to stop on her way to help out in a road accident. she didnt just show up late for no apparent reason.

and for my last firm 1 placement, we learned how to draw blood.... from a fake arm!

here's a snapshot of the "fake arm"

yesh, a lovely block of brown plasticine with hollow blue tube resembling the veins we're suppose to perform venepuncture on. exciting ,no?
no blood drawn in reality, though we have to put on gloves and everything just to simulate the actual procedure. my firm 1 friend who has received her blood test certificate got to draw blood from the GP ( the doctor) after a few tries on the plasticine! i hope i get mine soon=)
and have been having basic life support lessons on monday nights. never knew chest compression on a dummy is so energy consuming. we even learned how to operate an

AED (Automated External Defibrillator )自動體外心臟去顫器

2008-01-13T22:58:00.000Z

好久没blog啦,真的很忙啊..
做antomy worksheet会做上瘾=.=当然那是如果答案都在课本里找得到,要不然我只想把课本撕个稀巴烂

英文烂到根本不想用英文写部落格

呵,那天同学用了一个不雅的词

the 5 nerves of facial nerve : Temporal , Zygomatic, Buccal, Maxilla, Cervical 编成

Ten Zulus Buggered My Cat

问buggered何意惹得整桌同学喷饭=.=
zulus : an african tribe, buggered : anal intercourse

这个更绝 :
cranial nerves :
CN I Olfactory -Oh
CN II Optic -Oh
CNIIIOcculor -Oh
CNIV Trochlear -To
CNV Trigeminal -Touch
CNVI Abduccens -And
CNVII Facial -Feel
CNVIII Vestibulocochlear -Virgin
CNIX Glossopharyngeal -Girl's
CNX Vagus -Vagina
CNXI Accessory -And
CNXII Hypoglossal -Hymen (处女膜)

there are just so many choices & decisions we have to make as we grow older, first there's science stream or commerce in f4, then there's f6 or a levels or college, then which uni, what modules for selected components major decisions like what future career, uni course to minor ones like what am i going to cook for this week, what to have for breakfast bla bla bla

( very important for grocery shopping planning and budgetting, never knew feeding myself requires such detailed foreplanning coz food does expire quite fast, how best to use the least ingredients to make a variety of dishes : eg
if it's a mince pork week, i'll cook 台湾卤肉饭,鱼香茄子,麻婆豆腐,
if it's tofu week, 蕃茄豆腐,日本miso soup,
if it's chicken wings : japanese curry, soy sauce chicken )
and i do get stuck on the aisle of Tesco torn between whether to have pork or chicken this week><>

opening ceremony of 2 new blogs=)

2007-12-31T23:32:00.000Z

calling the attention of fellow friends~

chen hueh and yin shan just created their own blog, u can find the link from my sidebar^^

happy new year and all the best to everyone!

Visit to Liverpool- 2 darling wives

2007-12-16T09:51:00.001Z

F.I.N.A.L.L.Y end of term!!!!had a day off before the last day of term, so went off to Liverpool to visit my two darling wives who both happen to study in Liverpool.

after a 2 hours train ride, i was welcomed by Pig Wife Linh with this welcome sign=) Linh just had a Lasik operation in Vietnam over the summer. Looks prettier without her glassses=)
then Linh brought me on a city tour around city centre. Liverpool is the Capital of European Culture in 2008 so alot of constructions are underway to gear the city to serve this role. There were lots of red brick building, building that has a historical feel to it. And my first impression was that Liverpool os very clean and tidy, didnt really see any dirty backlanes, everything just looked so new and pristine.
thank you linh for taking time off your lecture to accompany me around. really happy to see you after so long.

and there were lots of roman-themed architecture. This picture was taken near the cluster of musuems and concert halls.
Linh leaning over a giant platter of a full english breakfast? nah, it was a model in the kids section of the world museum. i wonder why did we end up in the kids sections.

meet up with Luke after his lecture. Then went over to Vivien's place. haha, both my wives became prettier over the summer! Vivien changed her specs and highlighted her hair red~looks hip and younger ( though in fact she is older than me, but she loves to emphatise that i look more ah ma standing next to her*grimace*)

and she made me dinner~burger with lamb,cheese,onion, mushroom,tomato, omg it was absoulutely delicious and i was so full. arent both my wives the sweetest friends in the world=)

check out vivien's new uber cool dark red guitar, it even has an inbuild tuner! she played my favourite 五月天's <<温柔>>had a nice chat over dinner, she showed me the pictures from her recent trip to Sweden, i got a tiny cute little ship, an orange lock and key and a disposable camera as souvenir~

and it was time to say goodbye. i will definitely visit liverpool again next year~

Curry Night Out- M group social

2007-12-12T23:44:00.000Z

Went out for my first M group social event a couple of weeks ago. M group is just like a small class of 15 students who have their small group teaching sessions, student led discussions, anatomy sessions together.

i've always wanted to try the british curry, so was really really excited when our M group rep announced that we're heading for a curry house near the university. i've asked my ang mor friends what curry dish would they recommend. There's this Paneer thing i would love to try, curry with CHEESE CUBE, hmm, hmmmmm

all the girls in my M group

we had papadum first - indian crackers with mango chutney. the mint raita dipping sauce was absoultely tasty! it's mint sauce mixed with yoghurt.

onion bhaji- typical starter to a british indian meal. deep fried onion seasoned with chili powder, coriander. my classmates went " oh my god ing, ur not taking pictures of the starters!!"the naan bread was humongous. really regret not ordering one ( i very kiamsiap lar, intended to save money but in the end we split the cost evenly....) tried some from Ross, could instantly taste the difference between freshly served naan and the ones u get from Tesco.

i tried cooking tikka masala and rogan josh myself. so opt for a Balti curry with lamb tikka and spinach that night. not spicy at all ( what da ya expect, ang mor cannot stand spicy food, and i am an anak timur whose tastebud is spoiled by nasi kandar) nevertheless it was quite a nice meal, loved the mushy spinach. *flex biceps and sings i'm popeye the sailor man poot poot*

Birmingham is famous for its Balti dishes introduced by the Kashmiri population ( from Pakistan?) Balti refers to the round bottomed wok that the curry is served in. There's even a Balti Triangle somewhere in the city, and yesh, i am going to hunt that area down to satisfy my tastebud.

there's even a Malaya curry on the menu but just cant be bothered to try least i get a major letdown.

we head for a pub after the meal and everyone bought a drink and laucnh straight into a drinking game. at the point where i eventually lost, my classmates exclaimed in utter surprise :" ing you dont have a drink?" then everyone started pouring portions of their drinks into an empty glass concocting a cocktail. haha that nearly scared the shit out of me, but luckily i didnt have to down that. left early because i really dont know my alchohol tolerance level.

2007-12-09T13:14:00.000Z

happy birthday to my best brother in the world=)

my 5 C's

2007-12-05T16:44:00.000Z

coffee, cinnamon, curry, cheesecake, custard tarts.

come to think of it , all 5 are categorised under food.hmm.

oh and Chinese orchestra, Chen xing hong (ah shin's chinese name)

i would love to have some common sense and confidence too.

is having banana in my sandwich weird?

penisland.com (pen island)
expertsexchange.com (experts exchange)
therapistfinder.com (therapist finder)
genitalia.com (gen italia)

we all look at things in different ways. ahem,these arent porn webs. my lecturer listed them and everyone was sniggering.

i would love to have 25 hours a day as xmas present. sigh. what am i doing here??? i should damn it be GETTING SOME WORK DONE

2007-11-18T22:56:00.000Z

snow in The Beeches~that's where i live. Stephanie called "Ing it's snowing!!!" so hurried outside with my camera in hand. ducking from snow balls while trying to take snap shots, but still got hit square in the stomach=.='''if only my friends live in The Beeches too, would have been more fun than standing in admist of strangers staring out into the snow alone.

some ang mor was whizzing pass on the Tesco trolley. Steph said the snow scene in Uni is mesmerizing, ah cant wait to go to uni tomorrow=)

2007-11-15T20:25:00.000Z

very miserable=( costly mistake after costly mistake

no pain no gain, but my "pain" is exceptionally excrutiating everytime

very frustrated with myself,this is wad happens to 生活白痴,it is painful to have to learn every single bloody thing about life through mistakes. I have my fair share since starting uni.

i am so sorry daddy

there are times when everything just goes wrong, u just wanna curl up in bed under your covers and cry, and sob, and weep

till you're so exhausted and fall asleep

you wake up the next day, throw back the curtains, hold your face against the warm morning sun ray that blinds u temporarily

and life moves on

*****************************************************

"you speak as if your voice comes from your butt"

what kind of boss gives her employee this kind of "encouraging" comment?

BEAUTIFUL boss does

NB fat is beauty in the chinese culture( well, in 杨贵妃's time)

2007-11-10T20:52:00.000Z

i dont deny that i am a lap sap lazy girl...because i believe in honesty *self admire*

coz i have already been sleeping on the same bed sheet for a month..

well hey! i only do my laundries once in 2 weeks time? and my bedsheet is dark blue, had to wait for the dark colour clothes and jeans to pile up before i can wash in one go

was really excited that i finally get to change into clean new pink bedsheets

until i realised that..

bedsheet pack with no bedsheet in it

brilliant arent i?

sometimes i really do doubt that i have a brain at all

i bought it for a month and never bother to read the label.

sigh. washed and reused the same set of bedsheet

i found a piano in the uni!!! walked all the way there to satisfiy my itch=) nah, didnt get transported back into time like 路小雨in不能说的秘密
proof that i have been working hard... confusing myself with very very old textbooks for student selected activity week
the pavements are thickly covered with fallen leaves ( not in this pic), sprained my ankles a couple of times because u cant really tell what's underneath the leaves

and oh boy oh boy, i earned 10 pounds giving the students coming in for med sch interview a tour around the med school~bad habit resurfacing, rattled on facts of the med school at the speed of a machine gun and from the blank and expressionless looks of my group members (can i use the word entourage in this context?) they either didnt understand me , or was bored

at least the girls had the courtesy of filling in the awkward silence after my attempts to crack a joke with a feeble laugh

i dont care, i got my ten pounds

You know you've studying abroad in the UK for a while when...

2007-11-05T22:46:00.000Z

got this from facebook and modified the list that just goes on and on and ON

1. One out of 4 words you hear in the streets is "fuck" or "fucking"

2. You've said "cheers mate" more than twice

3.. You realize the most important religion is not Christianity but Rugby.

4.. You see semi-naked girls in the streets and boys wearing t-shirts with temperatures below zero.

5.You realize that dinner time is 6pm

6.. After a failed conversation with someone in the street you wonder whether he/she was speaking in Scottish, Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Irish or English

7.. You see 3 kebab shops and 2 indian restaurants in every street.

8.. You think you're going to visit a palace, a castle or a chapel and you only see a few old stones

9.. You have six months of holidays in a year.

10. In case you need to get your hands clean, you realise that you only have two options: boil your hands in water near to 90º or see how they become two beauty ice-cubes.

11.You find machines in pubs in which you can buy condoms, vibrators, lubricant and even a Hair Straightener.

12.You see potatoes everywhere, in all different forms and shapes, i.e. boiled potatoes, jacked potatoes, smashed potatoes, chips, crisps, etc

13.. You realize that no matter how weird the clothes you're wearing are, people just won't care.

14.. You learn that 4 cups of tea per day is good for you.

15. You have stopped questioning why there are carpets even in the bathrooms

16.. You see all four seasons in one day. first sun (oh blessed sun!), then rain, then snow, then hail. and sun, and rain, then...aaaah!

17. "hello/hey, how are you?" is replaced by "you alright?"

18.It's only five and every single shop is closed!

19. You've bought something at Argos!!

20. Your umbrellas have got broken at least twice and you are still hoping not to break the new one even if it's May!

21. You see your housemate ordering chinese food or pizzas three times a week

22. You realize that every product you buy "may contain trace of nuts"

2007-10-25T19:56:00.000+01:00

medical student freshers' night out. the blonde on the left is my "medical mum", a 2nd year student who gives me guidance. my "mum" dressed up as......a pelican! there was a student with anatomy illustration on his bare body. another girl was absolutely horrified coz her brother dressed as a tampon...

at a chinese restaurant. u know what? i am a chinese but i hold the chopsticks in the wrong way (cross it)
i was flabbergastered by the introduction show staged by the medical society. the brits are really REALLY open minded. the best part was when a bar tender character just stripped off the apron he was wearing for dramatic effect and he was only wearing a G STRING!!! *nose bleed* they were introducing a specialty alcohol drink of medbar and for every beverage which was used to concoct the final drink, they showed a picture of a nude medic student covering their private part with the wine bottle @-@
a random music shop, note the s shape violin in the centre^^

2nd firm1, GP (general practice) placement today~

we're learning about diabetes and had to prick our fingers for blood glucose test and i am friggin SCARED of needles=( my group mate mentioned that her 2nd year friend was showing her the bruisesssss she had on her arm from the blood sample taking lessons. am so not looking forward to that.

and god i think i lost my fingertip's sensation, i just cant feel pulses no matter how hard i try =( this week we get to grope each others legs and ankles (hairy legs can really put u off=p)

the best part was getting to interview a diabetic patient. we had a pleasant old lady who gave us alot of insights to leading a life with diabetes. she was very cheerful and optimistic even when she told us she lost her husband a few years ago to cancer. she said life has been lonely ever since then and lives with the memory of the last few years she shared with her late husband, going travelling in caravans etc. couldnt help but gave her a pat on her knees and said " u are very strong " and gave her a bear hug before she left.

we had a lecture on career life in A&E and the lecturer told us about how he had a patient who was about to die of heart failure. the patient asked him "doc, am i going to die?"

to which he replied quite frankly " yes, u are going to die" very gently

the patient requested him to hold on to her hand so that she felt someone was there to accompany her through her imminent death. and when the patient died, he felt a sense of calmness and peace that he had never felt before, that he had restore the dying patient's dignity. he said this was a moment where he will always draw upon later in his career life, to drive him through hard times and to keep him motivated as a doctor.

the lecture theatre was dead silence at that very moment ( there usually is a cacophony of coughs like an orchestra)

that, is exactly what keep us medical student going on, no?=)

2007-10-11T17:47:00.000+01:00

had my 1st CBM (community base medicine) session today, very lucky to have a friend in my group who knows the way to the GP practice where we were assigned coz i am toatally hopeless with directions.

our GP was very friendly, bought us lunch ( stupidly ordered bacon burger and end up eating the bap only coz the filling was beef, wasted a free lunch).

just observe her on her clinical rounds.no special case but did learn about Peyronie disease while nosing into patient's history, google it up! my partner was a male so was bit embarrassed when the GP answered my enquiry about what this disease entails.

oh my god i am such a slow learner. learned how to take blood pressure today and was so excited that i forgot the steps, eg, leaving the inflated sphygmomanometer cuff (ok, i googled that up,have no idea what that's called, not to mention how to spell that longggggg word )on jeremy's arm while i fumbled to put on the stethoscope i forgot to put on, forgetting to increase the pressure 30 mm Hg higher before deflating the cuff, and had to repeat the procedure.

when i finally did managed the steps right, it took me so long to try to identify when i stop hearing the sound of blood flowing that jeremy's arm went numb. he kept shaking his head in exasperation=p

mind wandered when the GP was discussing exceptional situation where we can breach patient's confidentiallity that i blurted out a really stupid question ( i thought the gp skipped a question and i just reiterate it) then everyone turned to look at me puzzled=.=jeremy said he wanted to say something but that would make me look even dumb-ER so kept quiet and kept a straight face. (whack him hard for that, cld have kicked me under the table to shut me up)

that's why i rather shut up coz i seem to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time especially when in contact with the british people.

i am gonna have such big trouble finding a partner when we learn how to take blood sample.

2007-10-04T21:09:00.000+01:00

happy birthday to my deareset daddy!!!

i was crying this morning in bed at 7am when i suddenly remember the special times i had with daddy in birmingham. dad is always busy at work so i had always been closer with mum. but daddy who is so busy with his work still put aside everything and accompanied me to uk to help me settle down.

helped me move all my heavy luggage from northampton to birmingham, gave me lectures on stop being unreasonably stingy and spend when i have to, worry about this and that.

just me and daddy on the buses, father and daughter talks. it's amazing how 3 short days can make me realise how much daddy loves me.

and the 1st time ever i kiss daddy on the cheek when he set off to the airport in a taxi, i had to use every ounce of energy to stop myself from succumbing to tears.

i am the luckiest girl coz i have the best daddy in the world=)

2007-10-04T21:01:00.000+01:00

entrance to my room, wonder does the artist of this master piece still remember her handiwork^^

i am S.T.R.E.S.S.E.D

but learning to cope nevertheless=)

Welcome Week in Birmingham Uni

2007-09-25T12:55:00.000+01:00

right. so i have 3 british girls and a half malaysian but british born girl as flatmates.

and i'm terrified. TERRIFIED big block capital letters. and so far i have only saw a china girl in my accomodation site.

tips for ppl staying in western country with english friends, make sure u know how to cook sweet and sour chicken or at least memorise the receipe, coz they love it and when u say chinese food, that's what they conjure in their mind.

to think i purposedly clarify that i cook CHINESE food(that'll put them off and i am telling the TRUTH) when my flatmates ask if i were planning to cook, and they went''ooo, i love chinese food!!!''

i dont want to be reprimanded for poisoning my flatmates even before i start learning how to heal sick people=(

actually they are super friendly, but have been spending my first few nights with dad so havent got a chance to really get to know them. let's see how everything goes.

been struggling with this clubbing issue. really not a fan of clubbing coz i feel so out of place. but fresher's social activities here=clubbing, nights out in pubs. i used to think maybe i should just go and give it a try so as not to be a social outcast.

but since meeting with some malaysian friends who hold they own stands and views, i realised that i shouldnt change myself just so that i can blend in. i've changed my views on clubbing since coming to uk, it's not sth bad, but if i dont enjoy it, i dont have to pressure myself either. maybe someday , when i do feel comfortable enough i might just venture in with friends.

lots of malaysians here, boys doing engineering twinning from taylors. daddy say should get to know them so that i have an army to call up upon in case i get bullied. hahaha. how cool would that be! attacked a few today, will proceed on^^

my new year resolution (it's kinda late for this but..)i wanna be CONFIDENT!!!

2007-09-15T19:01:00.000+01:00

漂亮宝贝，连我也忍不住要帮你宣传^^

yee all ready on the go to med ball!

k lar, make ashin 让位for a month from my dreams, hahahha

anyone want her number or autograph? friends of mine get special discount.

mayday in autocity!!!

2007-09-09T16:21:00.000+01:00

this, is TRIUMPH, autograph by all 5 members of the top music band in asia!!!(though still havent figured out which one was scribbled by my hubby ashin)

it was literally pouring that night, and we had to do without umbrellas as not to block the view of other fans behind us. drenched (housefly soup)but had a terrific time singing screaming and dancing in the rain^^went with yin shan, connie, xin ying, bin bin

they performed 6 songs :

我又初恋了
恋爱ing
天使
离开地球表面
温柔
听不到

i never dreamt that i could actually one day see dear ashin that upclose, was so dazed by the fact that i forgot to grab his hands during the autograph session. connie crouched and sobbed when she got off stage,coz ashin leaned forward to listen intently to her message. argh!!! i should have grabbed him and planted a big wet kiss on his handsome face!!!

i..forgot...to bring..my...camera....

2007-08-26T10:17:00.000+01:00

We were suppose to check out at 12 noon, but me and mum were still snoring happily in bed till 11.20am, I suppose the hotel people beh siok liao (not happy), sent a cleaner to knock our door “m’am, I need to change your tissue box”

Me still blurry eyes and groggy from sleep : “har, no need lar.”

“m’am that’s the procedure, if u please, I have to change your tissue box”

Wei ,leave me alone to sleep can, I say don’t want change then don’t want change lar why u so kepo (over helpful)

Of coz I didn’t say that..must maintain my elegant lady image
“leave the new tissue box outside, I’ll change it myself, thank you”

“ no m’am I have to change it, it’s the procedure, it’s ok, I’ll come back in half an hour’s time”

Screw your procdure la! But I went back to bed to realize it’s 11.20am.panic set in, frantically woke mum up
“oei mum!!! wake up wake up! Have to check out in half an hours time!” and head for the showers.

The very diligent cleaner never came after half an hour’s time. Mum say maybe was a crook trying to break in. hmm.

幸福是躺在妈妈的身旁一起聊天聊到睡着了
幸福是陪妈妈一起逛胡姬花园看她满载而归开心的样子
幸福是和妈妈一起找美食
幸福是牵着妈妈的手到LV shop朝圣说你挑啊,我去想办法赚钱买给你

幸福是妈妈对别人说of coz i'm proud of my daughter

幸福是我知道妈妈在看到这段时会笑

幸福是
我是妈妈的女儿

2007-08-26T10:05:00.000+01:00

Read in Everybody Worth Knowing May lend me that the average life span of restaurant in New York is 6 months.

I should have known better. Prior to our KL trip, mum tore some pages of food review from magazines with contacts scribbled on. Our to-visit-list included an Aunty Nat Nonya restaurant.

The taxi driver took us from PJ to Damansara, searching for Aunty Nat. I phoned the shop up after a few rounds of futile searching.

“ello ello, can u give the direction to Aunty Nat restaurant?”
“direction to what? Wait har, I pass to my colleague ”
“Hi,can u give the direction to Aunty Nat restaurant?”
“…..??? wait… ” in the background “oi! Come take this call!”

You know the game we used to play in high school PE lessons called don’t let the monkey catch the ball? The game where people ( well me in particular) just jump and wave our arms and feverishly hope that the darn ball wont come in our direction? I had a feeling that the people answering the phone felt that way too when they kept passing the phone around.

Finally,
“Aunty Nat restaurant? (this aunty ar, are u nuts or what) no, we don’t have a restaurant here”

Ooo, so we were searching high and low for a non-existing restaurant.

The taxi driver was far from pleased when we announced our change of plan- klcc for dinner.

“very far is it?”

“u take the LRT lar, easier for u and for me, traffic jam very teruk(bad) loh now”

Wu lui tan pun mai eh(got chance to earn$ also don’t want) taxi driver=.=’’’

Anyway, had Lebanese food at klcc, let mum tried swish kebab coz I’ve been telling her about it for ages. I love the lamb meat, raw onion rings, garlic sauce, and the kebab pocket. But this restaurant serves real teeny pockets…

2007-08-26T09:47:00.000+01:00

Went to Penang Spice Garden with mum, would say don’t bother to pay the RM 13 entrance fee, not much to see. But the Spice Café is a really nice place for tea with a superb view of Batu Ferringi beach.

There’s a >5o-years-old Datuk Kong Tree with offerings at the foot of the tree. The sign reads “ gamblers are known to consult Datuk Kong for lucky numbers”

….datuk kong ah datuk kong, lu bo bi wa diuk ban ji lar, wa tan dua lui liao bei bao yu lai bai lu…

Tried the Ginger Ale and Monkey Mocktail ( star anise, cinnamon, lemon grass, soda, nutmeg) specialty drinks concocted using spices. the platform was heavily shaded by branches, could just laze there enjoying the sea breeze and the gentle sound of the waves lapping the shore. Ate banana fritters bought on the way^^

Love the ornaments, very creative.

Popped by 慈济精舍书坊behind Penang British Council to have tea(yes,2 sessions of tea in a day), it was packed full of high school students revising there. The quiet ambience is very conducive for studying. Each beverage only cost Rm 3.

2007-08-19T17:11:00.000+01:00

hui yee : *half way through playing a chord*" wah, have to open my hand so wide ar?"

ing :" ha! see my fingers can reach an octave's width, nah listen, i teach u, every morning you wake up, open both of your palms and stretch!!!! *demonstrates with a scrunched up face as if in agony due to the effort of stretching *

hui yee peered at me dubiously ( my laughing in between telling her that piece of bullshit gave me away) :" how long must i do that?"

ing :" 5 minutes everyday, sister did this for 10 years so my fingers can open big big"

骗小孩子我最厉害啦^^
only primary two, my favourite girl=)很可爱的小朋友

2007-08-16T08:33:00.000+01:00

this is a good one :
so i've acquired the ability to talk bird talks and crap because i'm diagnosised with

houseflyitis (苍蝇脑膜炎)

note : meningitis(脑膜炎)

by a engineer-to-be-pretending-to-be-a-doctor, ha! but i get to set the symptoms :
1. u'll have a very attractive appearance
2. exceptionally smart to the extend of being a genius
3. very thick epidermis for your facial skin

2007-08-15T14:26:00.000+01:00

USM (University Science Malaysia) in Penang, view of the student hostel

went to visit Miss Lee Yin Shan together with chen hueh, phey shan, u met your rival, this chen hueh totally adores cam -whoring^^cannot stand her, see mirror in people's room( total stranger) also can take self shots like it's nobody's business. we invaded shan's friend's room to get this panoramic view,which shan deems is the best view u can get from USM hostel.

went on a round-the-island-tour.haha, couldnt locate Queensbay so went round and round, stopping occasionally to ask for directions. pic taken at Wong Kok.

happy day full of crap talks and picture taking=)

nah, i didnt grow shorter, there's such thing call 'high heels"