i passed. hallelujah.


went back to school yesterday evening to meet out mentors. the juniors were having their admission interviews and i recalled those awful times. awful because you do what you have to do, and after that all you can do is wait. and those things about how some of us sounded immature ("i want to help people") or put down other unrelated disciplines after medicine and were thus not accepted. -shudder-


anyway, was having an horrid cold. talking to anyone was hard, and i had to talk to my mentor, prof shek. what great timing. i was croaking away and my ears were blocked. s'wonderful. but she's quite nice, very open and energetic. talked about clinicians and research etc. said she'd catch up with us at the beginning of second year to see how we were. heh.


-and-, guess what? eighteen people failed physio. kenk and i were so stunned when we looked at the board. stunned to -not- see our matric numbers there. -thoughtful- what the heck, will just have to wait till tues to find out my grades...

tomorrow. tomorrow. tomorrow.

one word -- sick.


caught it from my dad, who must have got it from the hundreds of people out there with the same bug. self-medicating now, on left over anti-histamines and guafinesin. not sure what a doctor would say to that. anyhow, i'm getting better. i think.

didn't realize the second book sale was yesterday. it was in a mail sent much earlier, but i only saw the dates for seniors to bring their books down. i'm so...disgruntled/dismayed/disgusted with myself. i got my wheaters for five quid last year, when others spent twenty plus on the same edition. now i'll have to give my business to researchbooks or yunan, and spend like more than a hundred on the pathology and pharmaco texts. grr. -and-, i heard that yunan has sold out -all- the year two books. please don't tell me who's been buying them.

the ubin cycling was great. it's been, what, four years since i've biked, and as always, i'm amazed that i can remember instinctively how to balance. we went by abandoned wooden houses, the obs campsite, a country club which could only have been a failure, and several suicidal cats. suicidal because they insisted on sitting in the middle of the road to clean themselves, despite the rapidity with which we were approaching them. the dogs on ubin mostly look the same, with the handsome snout and orange-brown coloring. oh and i did something amazing -- i managed to force a van off the road. but it wasn't entirely my fault! i didn't hear him coming from behind, and when i did, i moved to the right, and for some reason, he moved to the right too, and in trying to avoid me, he had to drive on the grass verge. he honked me as he passed.


it was a sweltering day, and thanks to greg, we found ourselves on some gravel hill leading to nowhere with diggers doing their work in the distance.


and for the first time in years, i got to drink coconut juice from a coconut. fantastic, epsecially with the sun was beating down like it was on wednesday. had a great time, although my butt didn't. my pubic symphysis, ischial tuberosity and coccyx all took turns getting bumped by the saddle, and even now, they still ache. ugh. anyway, we left at about one or two and headed to tm for lunch at pizza hut. great way to round up the day.


yesterday, it was outing-with-fishie day. gosh has it been two weeks since pros ended?! we went to cine to catch the pacifier, starring vin diesel. that guy's perfect for the role, stoic, expressionless, buffed yet somewhat pleasant enough to take on the role of a navy seal turned babysitter. it's a great comedy, some slapstick but altogether good fun, though it must be the most violent disney film ever.


there's been lots of talk about the renaming of the medical school. one camp is angry because it's a silly name to have and the dean's office never asked us for our opinion. the other camp points out that having such a name distinguishes us from other schools in the region, and indeed the world. i happen to side with them. are we supposed to give a british, ang moh name to the school? naming the school after an asian was the right thing to do, especially since his family donated such a substantial sum. -no one- has ever bothered to do so. on top of that, imagine if the dean's office had asked us. they'd probably have never gotten round to deciding on a name!

had the last two pdp sessions on monday and tuesday. on monday, we met up with two cancer patients. the first was a twenty year old national service man, cheerful and seemingly robust, with only a bald head to hint at his illness. he was diagnosed several months ago with leukemia, but the prognosis is good, and he seems to be headed on the road to recovery. the other was an indian foreign worker who didn't know his diagnosis yet, but was clearly weak and miserable.


the next day we met two accident cases. the first, also a young man, had been on his motorbike when a car rammed into him, taking off the flesh of his right leg. think he's doing better now, still hurting i guess, and the doctors were incubating his bandaged leg to speed up the recovery process. the next patient was a middle-aged guy, who slipped off a ladder while polishing a lorry. his left leg hit the edge of the kerb and broke, so he's in for minor surgery.


his story is one that really touched my heart. i know there're lots of similar cases out there and the corresponding variations to the story, but his is a typical poor-will-always-become-poorer story. he's self-employed, with no insurance, no workmen's compensation, so he has to foot all the hospital bills by himself. his younger son had told him not to worry, that an operation was nothing, since all you'll get is a scar. it touched him, although he knew that was a kid's point of view, but it made him feel better. with all the support his family is giving him, i really hope he gets well soon. i could see he was holding back his tears. being the sole breadwinner, with no cpf, no savings and two children to raise, this must be a great strain on him.


oh well, i guess like what prof goh said, we can't become desensitized to such stories. there will tons of such people that we'll see in our career, but he reminded us we are all human, and no matter what, we should try to reach out to them. hmm, hope i'll be able to do that.


anyway, if you guys are bored, i've just put up two long soccer rants on my other blog. for those of you who only knew me in med school, yes, i can be soccer crazy. got up at two thirty in the morning to catch it. bleah.

wanted to blog last night, but my mind was too full to come up with a good post.


the pros are over. hope i can breathe easier now. this year's papers were awful. everything everyone expected was thrown out the window, and i for one was left with only the vaguest of memories of the submandibular gland, smooth muscle and all sorts of weird things to fill the answer scripts with. and a big thank you to the prof who said smooth muscle isn't important at all. in fact it was so unimportant they had to set a thirty mark question on it.


shit.


-but- it's over now, there's nothing anyone can do about it. someone mentioned that he has never felt so relieved after an exam, not even after the a levels. come to think of it, the a levels were nothing. whoever says university life was easier than the a levels should be shot.


anyway, as usual after the exam my tutorial group went out for lunch. this time it was fish and co, where the helping was so huge i could't finish my fries, much to the delight of the guys. btw, i was the only girl. -again- then we walked over to plaza singapura thinking there was a movie we could catch, but there was no show worth watching. we had nothing to do, then rodney saw that carrefour was selling remote controlled toy cars at a bargain, so we went down to take a look. i found the garfield dvd and a garfield cushion, and gave in to my post-exam/post-trauma impulsive purchasing urge. the dvd was twenty bucks, the cushion only four. saw several women buying two or three of the garfield cushions, and one girl grinning at them while her boyfriend looked somewhere else.


all in all, had a good time. as it was, the tv station was filming scenes for some chinese show, which of course attracted a lot of attention. was also pleased with my haul, relieved that the pros are over, happy with the company i had, and hoping i've got more to look forward to.


someone's happy news recently made me think back to my secondary school days. those time during cca, during class, after school. you know, stuff. i can't believe it's been five years past, has the passage of time changed anything? how about being in the same course? but if anything, i am grateful.


a faculty update: the faculty of medicine has been renamed in honour of dr yong yoo lin and his trust, which donated a hundred million and which the government will match dollar for dollar. it's the greatest single contribution ever, and it's to one faculty. first thing they should do is to build a bigger library. heh. and finally, we have a name -- the yong yoo lin school of medicine.

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)


if only i had half his strength and faith.

tomorrow we'll be far away

tomorrow is the judgement day

tomorrow we'll discover

what our God in heaven has in store

one more dawn

one more day

one day more