so many things have been happening over the past few days. let's see, just yesterday i left my shoes in the studio due to my utter carelessness (hung my shoe bag on the barre to talk to someone, and promptly forgot about it). thankfully it's still there. we got scolded by the dance teacher for not being able to do some steps, and i have a burning desire to throw the really good students in my class out of the studio because they make me and the rest of the true beginners look awfully bad.

five out of six results out, and i passed all of them. whew. especially pharm. was honestly expecting to fail it. huh. and we got our clinical groupings done, more or less i would think. it's so interesting to find out how people choose their working partners for the next three years. there have been several unexpected couplings/groupings, ie, people getting together with others who aren't part of their "daily lt clique". whatever the case, i'm glad our clique (gosh this sounds so exclusive) has stuck together.

and i need more sleep. can't the dean's office do something about our timetable? say, add one more week of hols instead of a miserly three weeks? you gotta understand we only have seven packed teaching weeks in two-oh-oh-six before our second year exams. a little reshuffling of lectures wouldn't hurt. heh.

and now i've got a whole lot of backlog to clear.

dance class in town yesterday. awfully good, because the teacher was strict and really worked on our turnout, not like the other dance school nearer the bay area (i'm trying to make it not too obvious which school it is!) which has eight-week terms and a teacher who didn't correct us individually. but i enjoyed myself, although he was fierce, and i hope i can progress to intermediate at least! oh, and i told miss c, she's the first person other than my family to see me with my hair all tied up in nearly thirteen years. yeah, it's been that long.

had lunch today at a popular cafe on campus, and it seems that it needs a little more practise in tact at the very least, in dealing with the issue of multi-religiousness. it's blatant discourtesy was disappointing, almost like that of a western country where people aren't exposed to other races and religions. couldn't they have made an exception and allowed outside food for just one customer? have half a mind to write a letter to the office of student affairs. what the staff needs to learn is respect, as well as lessons from other cafes who so willing welcome "outside food" in their midst.

inertia is getting to me again. round two is in seven weeks, and there's tons of material to cover, not to mention i gotta set aside time for r and r, and to clear my room too.

and did i mention that harry potter looked like he was in a certain stage of embryogenesis in the movie? like, look! pharyngeal pouches and webbed hands! apoptosis anyone?

first day back after the exams, and i'm looking forward to the next one month of lectures and tutorials and practicals while the rest of my friends tell me about their shopping escapades. i'm so looking forward to it. really.

as a side note, there was a lil' bit o' christmas spirit early this morning in the lt. someone commented that since it was freezing in the lt and a kind soul had hooked up his player to provide us with cheery christmas songs, all that was missing was the snow. we should get a tree. and mistletoe. how lovely.

interesting day it was yesterday. got my cable activated so spent quite a bit of time flipping through the channels. then i had to dash off for a hari raya lunch with the gang, before heading to city hall for harry potter with the sec sch people, but not after having half a rather messy carl's jr burger. when the movie ended, we moved to harry's (yeah that was the idea, harry's after harry) and still further to hagen-daz at the esplanade. kinda lost track of time, and ended up missing the last train home and had to catch a cab at the westin stamford (i can never remember the new name of the hotel). so, more or less a perfect dhs choir outing.

on to the movie. i was shocked at how dark the movie was. for those who haven't read the book (like me, don't scream!) you'd be aghast at how tragic and sinister this whole story is, and i'd venture to say, even darker than the return of the sith. the triwizard tournament, a kinda world cup for wizardry schools, is the main event of this movie, and i can't imagine why this tradition had to be continued because people die in it. an allusion to the (in)famous roman spectator sports perhaps? it positively sickened me that harry's friends were dragged into the lake and left there for him to save, and that in that maze (yeah sorry for the spoilers) the participants could be pulled by creeping roots into the earth, which is very x file-ish i must say. i really would like to know rowling's inspiration for those parts.

as for the film itself, it was a lot less jerky than the previous one. the continuity could have been better of course, as it was in the first two installments, but at least this time round, they prepared the audience for the next part of the story. ralph fiennes was a surprise as valdemort, full of demented and contorted facial features. the three central actors were great, though i felt rupert grint could do with a hair cut and maybe a stoop (he's now taller than dan radcliffe!). katie leung was nearly unintelligible with her scottish accent but sweet enough. what i felt was disappointing was micheal gambon's portrayal of dumbledore. there was none of the dignity and carriage that richard harris had. he spoke too rapidly and moved too fast for dumbledore, so the effect was lost. a pity really, because the movie had fantastic cgi and so many talented actors (miranda richardson as rita skeeter!) but on that count it really lacked something.

oh well, i might as well give my review of the singapore sling, which is that its a little diltued somehow and has a rather queer taste. perhaps it's an acquired taste.

scarily enough, i'm beginning to tire of blogging and reading other people's blog. it's all the same everywhere. people complain, people comment and people talk about their love lives. i mean, on this blog i only do the first two (cuz my love live is non-existent duh) but you get my point.

yesterday's pharm was horrendous and utterly dreadful. i revised based on whatever past year questions i could lay my hands on (which isn't very much i know) and they all had questions on the specific drug uses and properties as well as the drug-drug interactions. so i thought, bingo, now i know what to study! which turned out to be the most tragic thing because almost none of it came out. we were tested heavily on phamacokinetics, including the equations and graphs, all of which i neglected to revise. ugh. and the essays were worse. i could hardly come out with anything to fill a single page.

patho was slightly better, thankfully. so now i've got a chance to relax a bit for about a month before the madness begins again.

my bus broke down this morning, outside the psb building. barry says it's because that's the steepest part of the road, and it makes sense since i've seen many other double-deckers getting stuck there. but this isn't my point. since i was sitting on upper deck, i had to go down the steps to get out, and you know how it is that sometimes when you're in a queue and there're people in another queue joining up with yours, that you occasionally let people slip in front of you? ha, not this time. i was pushed to one side, bounced by a flabby arm, backwards, by this girl. i was like, wha- ? her friend behind didn't let me through too, and on top of that she kept asking shrilly what was going on, and why we were made to take receipts. i mean, relak la, your friend in front hasn't even taken her slip, so she doesn't know either. what's the use of asking and asking?

so it was that i had to wait till the whole group of them (yes there were like five or six of them) had reached the front before i could get off the steps, which meant i backed up the rest of the upper deck queue. grr. i'm not trying to point fingers or accuse anyone really, but when some of these people talk so loudly that i can hear them from the upper deck above the tv mobile noise, and when we're on the harbour front station's super long escalator and they refuse to keep left and back up the line of commuters behind them, i feel like doing more than just shake my head.

budak pantai's advertising on the tagboard, so guys, go support local talent! this is one group you gotta listen to. hundred percent singaporean, and fantastic singing. heh.

well the cable guy came, then found out our tv signal isn't switched to the scv channel, so we'll have to wait till earliest tuesday for another team to come and fiddle with our tv. what a letdown.

on the bright side, no distractions till tuesday, barring of course, my dear computer.

realised i haven't blogged about the health screening last week. my 'vital stats' are normal, although i'm twenty-seven point eight percent fat. hmmm. oh well, so long as my cholesterol and bp are within the healthy range, i should be happy!

here's to the last week of ca one!

breaking news: my family's finally getting cable tv this evening. woohoo! here's to more tv and distraction.

considering doing my pbl presentation now. this is crazy. while i'm being crushed by the sheer weight of my pharmacology and pak-tuo-logy notes and texts, i've to juggle one-oh-one cardiology at the same time. angina pectoris vs mi. yeow.

and am very excited, because i'll be watching harry potter this saturday with my sec school folks, a tradition which dates back to the first potter movie.

theme song for the time being - cher's walking in memphis.

"Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy - won't you look down over me
Yeah I got a first class ticket
But I'm as blue as a girl can be

Then I'm walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel?"

i was walking to the lecture theatre this morning, when i saw this woman in her thirties gasping and looking obviously ill. there was another woman next to her, whom i recognise was from the physio dept trying to tell her to go to the hopsital just one road away but she refused. apparently she's diabetic and needed an insulin jab. what she never explained was why she was two hundred metres away from a hospital but refused to go in. she screamed and yelled and refused our help, insisting that she would walk across to dover and catch the seventy-four home. a hospital customer service officer tried to calm her but she pushed him away, because she said she hated men.


she proceeded to cross the road and managed to make her way up the steps of the overhead bridge. when the cso again tried to help she punched him. actually whacked him in his face. it was crazy. she was crying and everything, and she was so weak she finally had to sit down. several passers-by also offered assistance, but she flatly turned them down. eventually someone managed to get a whole bag of sweets and she took it. at the same time we convinced her to take a cab home and that we would pay for it.


as it was, the first cab was very unhelpful. fortunately the cab behind was kind enough to take her home. this whole episode lasted half an hour, half of which was spent trying to calm her down, convincing her to take a cab and trying to get her off the overhead bridge. i was really afraid of what she might do on the bridge, with the busy highway right under us.


and i've not felt so helpless in such a long time. you want to help but if someone refuses it although she might faint or be seriously ill, what can you do? it was so frustrating because she was obviously not feeling well and could hardly walk, but she insisted on crossing the road and walking all the way to dover. am i making any sense here? my thoughts are disjointed tonight, but i do know i was rather upset for a while after that, and had to concentrate hard on poker-faced patho prof's lecture to keep my mind off it.


this is the second major incident that seems almost like a sign, reaffirming my beliefs and goals in life. i asked, and got a reply.

i've done what i've got to do, now i'm supposed to start studying. but guess what? i just spent the last hour watching one of my favourite episodes from the x files. yep. my favourite show of all time. no tv series has ever come close to it. never.


and so while i gush over the x files, the clock ticks away the seconds that could have been spent on pharmacology.

spent six straight hours watching the telly last night. i started with the last part of gilmore girls, then it was the news, followed by daredevil. after that was the local news, the apprentice, without a trace and finally whose line is it anyway? in between i managed to squeeze in dinner, one or two chapters of cancer and a long distance phone call. not bad huh. most unfortunately though, my two favourite shows of the sunday line-up are also the latest. without a trace isn't as cool and flashy as csi, but it has the edginess, well-scripted storylines and a great ensemble cast led by anthony lapaglia to keep the discerning viewer hooked. and of course, who doesn't love who's line is it anyway?


as if to prove my point that the nicer shows are always the later ones, channel five insists on showing scrubs at midnight and beyond. i loved its first season, but never got a chance to watch the rest. sigh.


if you've been watching the news recently, you'd have seen the scenes out of paris and the rest of france. a most unfortunate turn of events i must say, but it was clear right from the first day i was there that there is a great divide. i guess closing your eyes and turning the other cheek never makes a problem go away, does it?


ooh and my blog is worth US$2,258.16.

if you can believe it, here's a list of searches which turned up my blog. wow-wee.

cytology-how does the cell know when to move

anakin psychological analysis

dizziness tutorial lecture

sperm journey on camera

serratius anterior

the immunology and microbiology papers were as identical as chalk and cheese. one tested us on our understanding of the concepts, the other on sheer memory work. one involved stuff that were more or less provided in the notes, the other plucked questions out of the sky and expected us to answer them. it was horribly traumatising and it's not surprising that i'm not eager to find out my microbiology grade.


just can't bring myself to go through the torture all over again for pharmacology and pathology.


four down, two to go.

so i've finished my first round of microbiology. which doesn't count because my first round is the official "glance through" round. argh. as it was, i was reading all about hiv and aids, and all the horrible effects it causes. ya know, illnesses only the animals get because your immune system is so weak, and i thought about the case long ago about this woman who willing got hiv from her husband because she "loved him so much". i guess she never fully realised how horrible this disease is, and thought it was incredibly romantic to have them both develop kaposi's sarcoma or pneumocystis pneumonia or thrush together. i wonder if she still does now.


anyhoo, if only i could throw the whole stack of my immunology and virology notes down eleven floors, but i'd be arrested for killer littering so i've to keep them in my file like the good student that i am.


dang.