and so the journey ends for germany. they beat portugal 3-1 in one of their best performances in this world cup to claim third place. bastion schweinsteiger stunned the crowd by scoring twice from the edge of the penalty area, and had a hand in forcing an own goal from petit. ollie played his last international match, as did luis figo. ollie was made captain for one final time and did well by saving several portugese attempts at the goal. however he was denied a clean sheet after figo set up gomes for a late consolation goal. after the game they embraced, and both had tears in their eyes. zizou ends his run tonight in berlin, and the curtain falls on their generation of footballers.

did night duty again last night with j and j. ho on duty was a friendly guy who liked to laugh, and it always makes things easier to have an easy-going senior. saw one old man who had refused dialysis and was therefore in renal failure. we tried to ask him questions, but everytime he would do this peculiar thing, which was to pout, blow out a puff of air and then point repeatedly at his mouth. there was no history to take, and the only thing we got out of his wife was that if anyone tried to poke him with a needle he would yell. sure enough, when the ho had to do an arterial blood gas, we discovered that he could speak, but his vocabulary was limited to two hokkien unprintables which he screamed out again and again, even though the needle hadn't even gone in! when we pulled aside the curtains, the entire ward was staring at us. oh well.

we also clerked a twenty year old guy with a history of adhd, who had his third episode of fits that afternoon. he seemed a little slow and not really able to grasp what was going on. his mother was helpful, but she seemed flustered. in fact, some time later we found that he had had another "fit" and had fallen while trying to pee, so his plug came out and there was blood on the floor and the bedrails. there was not much to do but to wait till morning to review him.

last night also marked another first for us - we did our first per rectal. very weird feeling to be doing it. hmmm.

am fast approaching the halfway mark of my medicine posting, and i'm still overwhelmed by all the things i have to learn. it's unimaginable, the amount of information on these conditions. when you think you have a rough idea of a particular condition, someone will surprise you with something new.

will end off with two random things - first, i never knew what hot was till a few days ago, and two, this is a great quote : "You are what you love, not what loves you."