well, they're over. my first exam in medical school. biochem and anat were ok, in fact i managed to squeeze out a fairly decent grade for biochem (yes, we went through the paper straight after we were done) even though i barely passed the trial test. but today, oh man, today's paper was a horror. everything i studied didn't come out...except for the mcqs. so i was crapping away at the the four mechanisms of diarrheoa, and turns out two of them were correct. -pats self on back- i shall be content with a passing grade.


after the physiological trauma, our tutorial group went orchard to let out our pent up emotions. took 111 into town, then alighted at tangs cuz poof wanted to obtain some keepsakes from there. that wasn't succesful so we followed the bottomless gastric pit to search for food. we saw this huge banner outside some building promoting jack's place's student meal, so marche lost eight customers just like that. i had a steak, which was satisfactory. the soup was bland, so the only thing that saved it was the ambience. we sat there and talked about past disastrous chem pracs, which left us in stitches.


afterward, we thought we could make it for a movie, so went over to plaza singapura. along the way interesting things happened. -winks- anyhoo, there were no suitable times, so sammy and asrie went to lan, the rest of us went to yamaha and rodney gave us an impromptu recital. after that, we hung around till six before heading home.


it's good to be back.

...Then Allen went on. "Since we opened the whales in any case when the weather allowed it Mr Leadbetter took the opportunity to look into their anatomies."

"Excellent. Very good," said Stephen.

"And as he and I were particular friends I used to help him: I wish I could remember a tenth of the things he explained to me, but it was all a great while ago. Teeth in the lower jaw only, I recall; the two nostrils uniting to make a single valved blow hole and therefore an asymmetrical skull; scarcely more than a trace of pelvis, no clavicles, no gall-bladder, no caecum - "

"No caecum!" cried Stephen.

"No sir, none at all! I remember how on one calm day with the whale floating easy by the ship we passed the whole length of the intestine through our hands, a hundred and six fathoms in all - "

"Oh no," murmured Jack, pushing his glass from him.

" - without finding even a hint of one. No caecum: but on the other hand an enormous heart, a yard long. I remember how we put one in a net and hoisted it aboard; he measured and calculated that it pumped ten or eleven gallons of blood a stroke - the aorta was a foot across. And I remember how soon we got used to standing there among the huge warm guts, and how one day we opened one that had a calf in her and he showed me the umbilicus, placenta, and..."

Jack abstracted his mind from Allen's account. He had seen more blood shed in anger than most men and he was not unduly squeamish; but placid butchery he could not bear.

--from The Far Side Of The World, by Patrick O'Brian


back to anat now...

got the announcement during histology practical today that prof lee wasn't feeling well today so git tut was cancelled. however there's no news about tomorrow's tut, which is my slot, and it's past six in the evening, we should be getting some email from the administration, but none has arrived. please don't send one at eight tomorrow and expect everyone to come down.


and nus seems to consider us part of the school. according to the exam timetable i'm taking three modules on women's health, understanding my medications and microbes!! what rubbish. i don't know of any medicine student takes gen ed modules; three subjects are more than enough. and sometime ago, they sent us an email about feedback on the lecturers, telling us that we had to do it within those two weeks or we'd get our exam results five days' later. thing is, we've been doing it all along, and no one seems to care about confusing us by doing such.


-hopes there's no tut tmrw-

the budak pantai concert was a smash! oh man, it had everything one could ask for, music, singing, good, crappy jokes, local flavour...everyone in the audience was enjoying themselves, and so did the five guys on the stage. hilarious songs and i loved the way they did it, ya know, the un-plugged sort of concerts, in malay, cantonese, mandaring, hokkien. i'm glad they kept it that way even though they were performing at the esplanade, it's refreshing to have performance like that. they had so many crappy jokes, but the best, in my opinion, was gordon's(?) impersonation of sean connery, that really cracked me up.


well, the concert was not the only thing that went great yesterday evening. dinner was great as well, maybe it was because i decided to rethink everything and jo's soap opera kinda got me thinking even more. nonetheless, i'm grateful that we are what we are now.

a couple of days ago i was stopped by a lady outside the lecture hall, and she asked me if i wanted to go for a talk by an assistant dean. she said he would be giving tips on our subjects, but what she failed to mention was that it was actually a religious talk. however i knew that it was, and whatever desire on my part to listen to the talk dissipated because of this. i mean, God is there regardless of what we're doing, whether we're eating, sleeping, peeing, studying or having a vacation. does that mean if i have everything in my head like m'sieur -g i don't need anyone around? i can understand her enthusiasm but not her approach. for those who were went in, they got a shock when the speaker started talking about the new testament and nothing about studying. so, misreps for the sake of God?! give me a break.

i know i shouldn't be online, i know i should be studying, and i know i shouldn't be sleeping so much. but i can't help it. in any case i'm still sleeping in class, and the fish has to prode me constantly throughout lecture. and i'm half asleep during tuts as well.


arggghhh, omenta, omenta, omenta. and while the rest of the university is on study break, the poor sods here in medicine are still trudging to school at eight in the morning.


budak pantai, i'm countin' on you man.

the physiology department has kindly informed us that our exams will be only until git. great. thought they would be mean and add in repro as well. now we'll just have to wait for word from the anatomy department, which i hear from a fairly reliable source, will only be until git as well.


and today, whe i made that mistake on that one, somebody didn't know any better. -rolls eyes-


it's deepavali tomorrow, and thinking of the holiday is increasing my inertia to study.

since all my election posts are on this blog:


elizabeth edwards, wife of kerry's running mate john edwards, was diagnosed with breast cancer the day kerry conceded. sometimes fate can be so unkind.


ailin has excerpts of kerry's concession speech. i'm touched, i'm moved, i'm disappointed.


and i wished i had a chance to vote for a better world.

i'm fed up with those people who would rather talk in lecture than listen. we had an extra anatomy lecture by prof voon aka prof charming today, and he did say it was optional, yet there was so much murmuring rumbling throughout the lt as if everyone was so restless. and the noise always comes from the same area. i mean, give me a break, either you listen or you move elsewhere to talk. if you decide to stay, then shut up. because of the noise, voon asked if we wanted to postpone it to monday. no one specifically said yes, but since the chattering increased, he decided to end it after going through only some stuff, all because some students only cared for lunch. it would have been so much better if we'd just done it there and then instead of leaving to his prelab, which not everyone can go for. hope there'll be space in the theatrette next monday.


on a lighter note, prof voon is really so charming. we were having lunch today at the science canteen after his lecture, and he put his bag down next to our table ( technically it wasn't our table, it was santhya hc and jo's table) so that he could buy his coffee. when he came back to get his bag he thanked santhya for taking care of his bag. he chose the table where girls were sitting and not the other table which was occupied be the guys. no wonder he's so popular. ^_^

maybe blogger doesn't like me to blog about politics? this is the third time it deleted my post.


anyway, kerry has conceded and i think the world should weep. for the soldiers in iraq, for the hostages who have to beg for their lives while certain obstinate mules insist iraq is won, and for the people who will lose their lives to more terrorism and horror. bush said, either you're with us or you're not. he's right, i'm not.

oh well, kerry has conceded, and i can go back to my femoral artery and nerves. but 'tis a sad thing, and there will be more sadness should the hostage crisis worsen. singapore has a small token force there, as do many other countries who have no choice but to support america. we have to think of that. it's too bad that countries all over the world, in europe and here in asia would rather have a kerry/democrat us government, but for now, the americans can continue to scratch their heads and wonder why the world hates them so.

i'm posting here because the other blog doens't seem to work. ugh.


americans go to the polls today, and i sure as hell hope that kerry wins. for whatever promises both candidates say, i discount that, because everyone does it to win an election, even in school. so i'll just go by his track record in life, which is that he did serve his country in vietnam, and was decorated for it. bush, and cheney on the other hand, both evaded draft, which although was quite a common thing during those times of upheaval, is something that works against them now. bush had a hard-headed plan to go into iraq and afghanistan to topple their regimes, but after succeeding, what do you do to ensure the country doesn't plunge into more turmoil? obviously this never crossed their minds, and because of all their bumbling ways, 1081 american soldiers have died in iraq. for what? for freedom? for justice? for peace? the iraqi's have neither, lives are being loss daily, and resentment against american intervention is rising.


how about the report about the wmd in iraq by this british diplomat last year? the uk went to war with his report, and it turned out to be false, and he took his own life. this war is crazy, and everyone is being dragged down with it. 'either you're with us or you're not', so goes the infinite wisdom of bush. when you see the hostages weep and beg for their lives, what matters more? hundred of years later, historians will probably write about man's inhumanity against man, how one man's so-called quest can impact other people's lives, how this veil of terror and the second iron curtain fell just fifteen years after the first one was lifted. this sounds like ahab's search for moby dick isn't it, the vengeful search for a damned beast, the useless strive to find and slay this entity that can never be destroyed. just look into your country's literature mr bush; herman melville was a genius.


and i'm suddenly horrified at the similarity of the story in moby dick and what is happening now. it only hit me just. ishmael thus stands for the world, queequeg symbolises then troops and the relief workers sent there, ahab is bush and fedulla(i forget the spelling) is osama. that part when fedulla stands in the shadow of ahab and reads the future in his palm and how he predicted the way ahab would die( by a rope, and that his ship would be a hearse). it's just too horrifying to think any further.