goodness knows it but i want the Polaroid One600 Ultra!!

and the funky red lomocam of my dreams!!

call it my obsession...

tenners anyone??

the freaaaaaaking internet connection at College Square totally "rocks"!!

sense the sarcasm oozing out.

ditto my lecture notes, PBL notes, journal articles, blogging, emails, everything!!
hence, i'm stuck jostling for a space at the computer cubicles in the biomed library, typing on some creaky keyboard.
~~blaaaah~~

anyways, today's Shaleen's big 2-0!!
happy birthday girl!!
sorry but u are officially kicked out of the tenner's club... we're pushing you over the line to the twennies' club just down the road from here. but hey, you still have the honourary membership that you once had.
heck, someone's not getting any younger eh?? lol.
but still, enjoy your birthday at Dracula's tonight alright? we'll allllll be there with bells a-ringing and fancy dresses.

anyone going gothic tonight??
the dress code says smart casual or gothic even though it was a freaking theme restaurant. went to the adelaide branch of it and it was great!! i still remembered the cabaret show they put on about sperms and ovums swimming to each other which was roaring good fun and the dessert of choc coffins.
but no way am i wearing my own version of smart casual. med school said smart casual for clinicals and i have to end up wearing collared G2000 shirts and black pants. so bo-o-o-o-oring!!
i don't have the guts to wear funky looking shirts for clinicals for fear of being kicked out.
but hey, one consolation that i am breaking the conventional standards of a respectable-looking doctor is the tattoo i have on my top of left ankle!!
bet none of the patients noticed that!! and thank goodness for that!! otherwise i doubt they would even let me feel their happy little livers!!

but i digress from my tattoo....

once again, happy sweet 2oth, shaleen!! you totally deserve the BEST birthday!!

XOXO Mel who is still in the tenners' club till next Spril which she totally dreads

of livers and cannabis

this shall be a certain milestone of sorts for a medical student

today at approximately 1115 hours, i did my first gastrointestinal physical examination on a REAL LIVE patient. i seriously touched (in medical terms, it's called palpate) the abdomen of this male patient.

AND i got to feel the liver!!

how cool is that??!!

it's cool coz for months, i have just been learning and observing the physical examination part. but now, i get to do it M-Y-S-E-L-F!!

and get this: the male patient that i examined was a CANNABIS USER!! a real drug addict dude!! maybe it's not exactly the coolest drug to get addicted to, unlike heroin or other heavy duty stuff. but hey, it's still illegal recreational drugs man!!

and not to mention, the guy was seriously cool about the whole thing. when we were practising taking his contextual history, the first thing he said was "Oh yeah, before i came in [to the hospital], i drank lots of alcohol and was doing cannabis...." i was like seriously unprepared and my mind was screaming "WHAT THE...??" you could imagine how huge my eyes went. *POPS*

and the doctor went like "yeah, okay, moving on from there, tell us about your abdominal pain..." totally cool, and taking it in his stride.

hmm... and because of patient-doctor confidentiality, the doctor can't tell the authorities about his illegal drug use.... and i'm only allowed to talk about it without using his name or any identifying characteristics.

and i got to feel his liver!! you can totally feel it with your fingers if you palpate deep enough and you ask the patient to inhale deeply and if you are at the right place, you can feel the liver do a quick in-step to avoid your fingers pressing into it!! it's seriously cute man!!

i'm so gonna practice on any unsuspecting friends that come by my room and that i can catch hold of!! *evil grins*

i get to see if their livers are healthy happy smiling little livers!!

the greater good

i still remember concluding after one Health Practice lecture months ago about how doctors are not only healers, but they are so much more, more specifically ethicist.

and embarking on med school has truly humbled me.

i used to think that i'm pretty informed about various issues around the world in the past and present. i love reading and used to think that i'm a pretty well-read individual. i love autobiographies and reading these gems of people's lives sensitize my soul to the sufferings, joys and experiences of the authors.

but just today, i was doing some reading on Aboriginal Health for my tute tomorrow morning. and suddenly, i realise that hey, i'm not that well-read after all!! after studying in Australia for the past year, i have yet to understand the Aboriginal history of Australia.

i have just went on with my study life, oblivious to the social conditions of the foreign environment that i am in, consumed by the various EAP assignments and dramas that i had to pass up!!

i am ashamed to admit that yes, i am most probably ignorant of the social climate and history that Australia has.

as i read about the various injustices that the Aboriginals had to suffer at the hands of the white colonisers, i realise that the same bloddy thing happened all around the world too!!

colonisation for the sake of the "greater good" of the people....

war for the sake of the "greater good" of people...

hold on a second, didn't Hitler proclaim that before he sent millions of Jews to the gas chambers??

of all the topics in the world...

a girl can never have too much yum-chaing, gossiping and retail therapy with friends.
(neither can a girl have too many shoes, Chiann!!)


so, sue me for having fun on a Sunday and for cruising the shops till afternoon!

but hey, a girl just wanna have some fun man!


especially if fun included Sha, Janice, Chiann and Jacq

and Dragon Boat's yumcha session

and no-holds barred gossip session

and retail therapy at Supre and Valleygirl and Ozmosis



it's been ages since i last bought a tee and gossiped about pepper sprays and female genital mutilation --

(how yumcha can bring out this topic is still a mystery to me. but what can i say, when we girls get together, we do talk both frivalous AND serious world-changing afflictions. for further info on FGM or commonly known as female circumcision, check wikipedia or rather read a book for a change. try Waris Dirie's Desert Flower and Desert Children. even though Waris brought this topic to light and has since championed a few reforms, it's still quite rampant in the African regions and you will never believe the hellish experience some of the girls have to go through. imagine removing the clitoris and then sewing up the vagina until only a drop of urine can pass through at one time. and then imagine doing the operation on a rock, with unsterilised equipments, without anaesthesia, by an medically-unexperienced village healer of sorts. and then imagine the post op care including being wrapped up in a coccoon of sorts and left to your own healing devices with only minimum bandages and sustanence. urinating is a pain, having sex is no longer pleasurable. in fact, it is just excruciating. all for the price of supposed benefit of the circumcised girl. total utter nonsense is what i say.)


sometimes, it makes me angry at how some regions of the world are still living in the shadow of illiteracy and indifference and misinterpretion. i'm sure they do not choose to be uneducated (at least i hope they do not) but it's still no excuse for the things they do to their young girls.


yet there are regions in this world that has too much information on their hands. too much info and money to do as they please and to use that knowledge for "the greater good of mankind" is also not an excuse to commit the atrocities that are present in this society.


at times like this, i feel the shallowness and somewhat idiocy of being happy about my red and black cups and the fluorescent pink tee i bought from Supre when due to FGM, girls my age are squatting over flies-infested hole-in-the-floor-makeshift-toilets crying silently in pain with every drop of urine that falls noiselessly to the murky waste below.

it makes me sick.

the statement of the day

"hmm....just 5 more minutes..." turns out once again into an hour...

i so can't believe it...

but it still makes me smile....

*hearts* Mel

ramblings

emotions are wonderful little buggers to have.
you feel the euphoria
you feel the joy
you feel the ants-in-the-pants anticipation
all that wonderful jazz

and it makes you feel utterly and uncontrollably human.
you feel the despair
you feel the hopelessness
you feel the pulling-your-hair-out frustration

it's so beautiful that it makes me cry even.


*Listening to The Sweetest Sounds from Rodger and Hammerstien's musical version of Cinderella. i love books, so naturally i love fairytales. i love that imagination that runs wild whenever you start a bedtime story that ends with a "happily ever after". i have a confession to make that will ultimately label me a nerd for the rest of my life and that is i love making up stories in my head when i was a kid and i still do in fact, at the height of 19 years old. i have a mindful of stories about ogres and giants and pigs that fly to Foodie Wonderland. i like to see where my imagination takes me and more often than not, my stories that i tell myself to sleep often last a few nights and seem never ending until in a fit of boredom of the old characters and anticipation of meeting the new characters, i would just hastily tie up the old one with a "and they lived happily ever after".

it's my form of dreaming. reality is sometimes suffocating you see, even for a 9 year old girl.