Success!

Now usually, my trips to the grocery store are nothing to write home about. But this week, this week was FANTASTIC!
It started off like any other week. First I headed to the produce section to pick up some broccoli, green beans, mushrooms, carrots and apples. But as I passed the canned soup section, that’s when things REALLY got interesting.

I have been craving for some cream of mushroom soup for the last couple of weeks without much luck. But this week, out of nowhere, THERE it was. Right at eye-level.

Hallelujah!
For those of you that know me, you KNOW how much I love my cream of mushroom soup. As a matter of fact, I enjoy all the “cream of…” soups. But mushroom. Mushroom is my favourite!

I rounded the corner and went into the snacks sections. I’ve been trying a variety of cookies but have been unsuccessful with finding the perfect choco chip cookie. But this week, I found what I was looking for.

“Coles Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies”. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Sweet, but not too sweet. Not quite as good as PC's decadent choco chip cookies, but not too bad at all.

And when I thought things just couldn’t get any better…
With less than 45 minutes until closing, the rotisserie chicken was marked down from $6.94 to $3. Since I didn’t really feel like cooking tonight, I thought “meh, I’ll give it a try”.

I got home and devoured the whole chicken (almost). And there was stuffing inside! It was SO good!

May your grocery shopping experiences be as good as mine were this week.

A hairy update…

Since arriving in oz I’ve only cut my hair once.
That was on march 5th. almost 12 weeks ago.
Understandably, my hair is getting quite long. And is starting to look like a bit of a mullet at the back. (I’ll let you put on your creative thinking-caps to come up with some visual imagery of your own for that one. Okay, no. it’s not THAT bad. Think a little shorter.)
I’ve been wearing it au naturel. No gel. No headband. Just me, my hair and the breeze running through it.
And I like it!

Sh-weaty!

Did you know that as your body acclimatizes to a hot climate it actually sweats more? I know! How counterintuitive is that???
According to Guyton & Hall’s “Textbook of Medical Physiology” (the big read of the MONTH! And probably for the next 4 years!!!) an unacclimatized person in hot weather seldom sweats more than 1L/hour. However when exposed to this hot weather for a period of 1-6 weeks, they’ll actually begin to sweat more profusely (up to 2-3L/hour). Evaporation of this much sweat allows for heat loss of more than 10 times the normal rate! But with acclimatization, there is also a reduction of the concentration of salt in the sweat, allowing for better conservation of body salt.
SO. We sweat more, up to 2 or 3 times more. But our sweat is less salty.
Interesting… *scratches chin* very interesting...

don't you hate it...

when they cancel morning lectures without any notice?
i got up this morning at 6:30am to get to an 8 o'clock lecture. i braved the frigid cold (it was like 15°C in the morning! my toes were cold!) and when i got there, i was told that the lecturer was not coming due to an emergency appendectomy.
oh well. *sigh*

the funny thing is that when i was in undergrad, i used to LOVE cancelled lectures. they would bring a smile to my face.
i wish i could say that now that i'm older and more mature, i have a greater appreciation for my education, value every educational experience and yada yada. but something tells me that's just not the case.
on second thought, maybe i'm on the right track. maybe i HAVE matured. and i DO have a greater appreciation. not necessarily a greater appreciation of my educational experience but a greater appreciation of the bottom line! HEY! i paid up-front for that lecture! i want it! GIVE ME MY LECTURE!!!

sunday morning dip.

went for a swim this morning with susan.
it was quite refreshing.

there's something soothing about swimming in the morning sun.
sure beats swimming in a concrete bunker (aka UofT AC)!
;p

panic attack?

just under 3 weeks until my first mid-year exam. 19 days, 18 hours, 47 minutes and 36... 35... 34... seconds to be exact.
i'm actually looking forward to it. hm... let me rephrase that. i'm not exactly looking forward to the long hours at the library (which have already started!) but am looking forward to seeing where i stand. we haven't had a lot of academic feedback, so it'll be nice to see what i'm doing right and what i'm doing not-so-right. where i'm putting in too much time and where i'm not putting in enough.

funny thing is...
i've never been one to stress out a whole lot before an exam. all through undergrad, i've been a calm-before-the-storm kind of guy when it comes to exams. very nonchalant.
but a few nights ago i had a dream (yes, another dream...) and in this dream, i was just a complete wreck. i was in panic attack mode, racing against the clock, and had that sense of impending doom. all i can say is... i hope this isn't a sign of things to come!

People watching.

Have you ever sat at a busy intersection or on a park bench and just watched the people walking by? It’s fun. It’s fun to look at strangers and to pick up on their little eccentricities.
Lucky for me, I don’t have to go to a busy intersection or a park bench. Seems like all the interesting/weird/strange people are right here in my building.

Well to start off, I have my roommate Samer. His aquarium & its contents are probably worth more than all of my belongings combined. He recently bought this huge contraption that keeps the water cool. It hums all through the night. And yesterday there was this jumbo-sized delivery for him. I swear; the box was taller than me! It turns out it was a new light stand for his aquarium. (don’t ask what was wrong with his old light stand cause I have NO idea).
With all the gadgets that are running in his room, it’s like a sauna in there. Apparently the aussie summers aren’t warm enough for him!

More peculiar people:
There is this one guy that lives in my building that always, I mean ALWAYS scrubs his sandals with a worn out toothbrush and the water hose (which is located just around the corner from me) on Monday mornings. If it’s a Monday morning, he’s out there scrubbing away. Never really worked up the courage to comment on his somewhat obsessive scrubbing though.

Let me tell you about just one more weird guy.
There is this guy that always walks around in his boxer shorts. Actually, they’re briefs. Definitely briefs. I have yet to see him in a pair of PANTS! He walks around the building in his bright coloured briefs all the time. Oh no, they are not simple black or grey briefs. They are bright red or bright orange or even bright green. And not that I’m immature or homophobic (I actually don’t even know if he’s gay. but from the colour of his briefs I might venture a guess….) but that’s just a little too much visual info than I can deal with.
You know what the kicker is? The other day I bumped into him in front of the laundry machine – in his briefs of course – and we got to talking about this and that, and he asked how old I was. I told him to take a guess. He guessed 27. TWENTY-SEVEN! Do I look 27? I think I’m definitely approaching the age (or past it!) where I no longer feel good when someone says I look older than I am. We all go through this phase. When we’re in our teens we want to be told that we look old, or at least old-ER. But somewhere between 17 and 22, being told you look older than you are loses its appeal. I think in the end what really got me was not him thinking that I was 27 but his reaction when I told him my real age. He was just completely flabbergasted! He wouldn’t believe me.
What.?
Do I not look 22???

what a goof!

i had quite the morning.
it started off great. i slept in til about 8... managed that perfect balance of feeling refreshed and energized without feeling guilty for sleeping-in.
read a couple of chapters, had a big breakfast, showered and was headed to school.
i put my shoes on, stepped outside and closed the door. as soon as i heard my doorknob click, it hit me. i had left my keys on my desk. ahhh!!!
i locked myself out of my own room! shoot.

the good thing was that class wasn't scheduled to start for another hour and a half. bad news was that i had to bus it down to my real estate agent, pick up an extra set of keys, let myself in and then return the keys later. errr!!!

when we were kids my dad used to tell us: (translated from korean) - if you have a bad brain, your arms and legs suffer.
so true. so true.

R.E.M. sleep

I’ve always been a morning person. But since I moved down under I’ve REALLY become a morning person. I’m usually in bed and asleep by about 10:30. On weekdays I’m up at 6:30 and weekends by about 7:30. The funny thing about my weekends is that I always get up at about 5:30 to use the washroom and have a drink of water. I sleep until my alarm goes off at 6:30, turn it off and go back to bed for another hour or so. During this last hour of sleep, I have some of the most vivid dreams ever. Here’s a little sampling of my dreams from the past week or so.

1. I am an accomplice to a bank robbery. I’m the guy that sits in the car with the engine running. The kicker is that our get-away car is a Porsche 911 carrera. Convertible. I wait. I wait for my partner to stroll out of the bank with a pillowcase full of money. She hops in and we speed off. But there is no hurry. There is no panic. I slide seamlessly through the gears and before you can even hear the police sirens, we’re off into the sunset. The steering wheel is on the left-hand side. So I guess I must be robbing the banks back home. ;-)

2. this time, I’m on the other side of the law. I’m some FBI or CIA agent that’s running after a bad guy. I fire my weapon in public as if it’s no big deal. We run up and down subway tunnels, run through busy intersections and up and over fences as if the whole world is just an obstacle course. I finally chase him down and corner him. But just at the most critical moment, *CLICK* I run out of bullets. :-(

3. I’m sitting at home studying with my door open. A woman comes by with two children in tow. She asks me to write a doctor’s note for her two teenage daughters that have each missed a test because they were away on a family vacation. I try to be as polite as possible. But this woman just doesn’t seem to get it. I try to explain to her that a) it would be highly unethical for me to write her daughters a note for a sickness that they never had and b) I’m a lowly first-year medical student and my signature means squat! :-p

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what these dreams mean?

ECGs...

this weeks we've been playing with some ECGs.
this is mine from the other day.

i've labelled the different parts of the wave.
my heart rate was actually down in the 40s during my first run through and then someone brought it to my attention and then it jumped up to 52. boo.
at last check, lance armstrong is rumoured to have a resting heart rate of 32-34 beats per minute!

sudden loss...

today i lost a friend that was near and dear to my heart.
the lost came so suddenly. for a few seconds i stood there not knowing what to do.

*sniff sniff*
thanks for the memories.
may you rest in peace.

ok seriously... damn! my headband broke! i just went to put it on and it snapped!
i know some of you disliked it from the start but i loved that headband! now what am i going to do? err!!!
i'll take this as a sign that i should get my hair cut. i will THINK about getting it cut this weekend or the next.

aussie english lesson #5

Wagging – skipping class. Don’t you have lectures today? Yea, but I’m wagging.

Sticks – rural area, boonies. “Where do you live?” “Oh, I live out in the sticks. About 6 hours away from any major city.”

Cracker – really good, great. So the other day I get an e-mail from my surf instructor and the first line read “Cracker link on your blog!” and I’m thinking “huh?? What does that mean and how did he find my blog?” turns out he’s got a tracker on his website. After the post from a few Fridays ago, I guess a lot of you had checked out the website. He was curious to see where all his new traffic was coming from and that led him back to my blog. So there’s another word courtesy of Jamo. CRACKER!

Cheers – I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this one already. It’s probably the first word I noticed. It’s synonymous with “thanks”. But it’s often used on parting or ending a conversation. Every aussie signs off their e-mails with a “cheers” at the end.

Queue – back home we don’t use this word much. And when we do, we usually use it as a noun. “there was a long queue in front of the bank machine”. But here, it serves more in its verb form. “I was in a hurry but people had queued up past the entrance and around the building”. “hey, what’s everyone queuing up for?”

Overcooked – I am NOT making this one up. It came up in our PBL group meeting the other day. So I’m told that in oz, the word “overcooked” is used to describe a baby that is delivered post-term or a baby that is overdue. Where did they come up with this? Well, apparently a baby that’s delivered after 40 weeks, “looks overcooked”. I’m told that their skin is RED and dry... like an overcooked turkey or something. How’s THAT for some imagery?

I just have to remind myself that aussie english isn’t ‘weird’. Just different. Cases in point:
• Toilet – not bathroom, restroom, washroom, powder room or any other room. Just toilet.
• Eskie - ice box, cooler
• Trolley – shopping cart
• Heaps – lots, tons
• Car park – parking lot
• Footpath – side walk
• Scull – gulp down, chug down