kevin in '07.

congratulations to mr. kevin rudd on his election victory.
i further extend the congratulatory statements to the people of australia. you now have a prime minister that no longer looks like a walking caricature!

unfortunately for mr. rudd, on this side of the ocean, he's known more for his ear-wax eating tendencies than his opinions on global warming or on iraq.

my apologies.

to those of you that had a miserable time commuting in the snow/slush today, i'm sorry.
you see, i have been secretly hoping for snow in toronto before i even left brisbane. and today i got my wish.

they started playing christmas music at work today.
i'm tired of it already.

celebrities...

i had my first celebrity-sighting at roots today. well it was a little more than a sighting. i helped him pick out a couple of pairs of gloves and a couple of sweaters. even fished a size for him from the stock room. who was this mystery guest? it was peter mansbridge from CBC!
i don't mean to offend but he looked a little older and slightly chubbier than on tv. he was dressed really casually with a pair of jeans and a roots sweater & jacket from a previous purchase. he was also wearing his glasses. he looked like your average grandparent. i actually didn't recognize who he was until he spoke.
he had that soothing demeanor and still added his 'thank yous' and 'pleases' to his sentences. that's what impresses me lately. people that shop without looking at price tags but still have enough gentility to say please and thank you.

speaking of celebrities... the elves/midgets/little men/what's the correct term??? from the movie "fred claus" are going to be at the bay/bloor roots on wednesday from 4-6pm to do some gift wrapping and some holiday cookie decorations. drop by if you're in the area. i unfortunately can't be there.

i had another pretty good day in terms of sales. (i promise i'll stop bragging about my sales after this post!) i sold ~$1900 worth of stuff. considering it was a rainy monday, that's pretty darn good.

ROOTS!

so i've found a "part-time" job at roots on bay and bloor. i put part-time within quotations because that was the initial intention but it's more or less turned into a 4+ day, 32+ hour FULL-time job.

so far it's tiring but i'm still having a good time. i don't look at the roots logo and shudder. not yet anyway.

i had some monster sales this weekend though. i sold like $2300+ yesterday and another $2600+ today. trust me. those are pretty solid numbers.

i was a little disappointed yesterday when i found out that the founders of roots, michael budman and don green are actually originally from detroit, michigan. and here i was thinking that roots was 110% canadian.

drop by and get an early start on your x'mas shopping. don't be shy. when?
1. thurs. nov. 15 ~ sun. nov. 18 are "customer appreciation days". everything in the store is 25% off of the LOWEST TICKETED price. you don't need me for this. drop by any roots you want.
2. thurs. nov. 22 ~ sun. nov. 25 are "family and friends days". everything in the store is 50% off of the ORIGINAL price. you need me for this. so drop by bay/bloor roots on fri/sat/sun. e-mail me and i'll let you know my sched. the only catch is that you have to pay CASH. you know what they say... CASH IS KING!

bananas for bananas.

i had my first banana today in like 10+ months. bananas in australia were so ridiculously expensive. if i remember correctly, they were like $12/kilo at one point.
i must've looked like a bit of a fool though. i think i had this huge grin on my face as i ate it.

something else i've noticed about food... i can't eat spicy food anymore. after spending basically all of 2007 eating bland, non-spicy food, i feel like my capacity to handle spicy food has diminished considerably. i first noticed it when i went out to eat some kimchee tofu stew out in k-town early last week. my lips started burning and i couldn't even finish the my whole meal. today i put some hot sauce on my chicken teriyaki for lunch and i couldn't handle it. i've become such a wussy.

in other news...
having a great time with the elective. i feel like i've got a good grasp of what's going on. i don't feel as overwhelmed and lost as i did during the first couple of days.
one thing that i have had some difficulty with is finding patients that are comfortable with a "male med student". i'm kind of divided on this topic. from the "male med student" persepective, i think it's unfair. first of all, that's reverse sexism. secondly, patients know that they are coming to a teaching hospital and they should expect to have med student (male or female) conducting/performing parts of the exam or at the very least just simply observing and learning - which i'm totally fine with.
however, i can totally understand and empathize that if i were a woman coming in for a pelvic exam or a termination, the last thing i need/want is an extra set of eyes looking at my private parts.
so where do you draw the line between being polite & letting patients have their privacy and being slightly selfish & looking after your own education? i mean what if i, as a male med student actually really wanted to study obs & gyne? how am i supposed to learn if patients aren't willing?

what we (the staff and i, the staff by the way, have been incredibly accommodating) find to be the best method is for me to take the patient into the room first by myself and take down their history - of course at this point i let them know that i'm a med student and that a "REAL" doctor will be joining us shortly. this gives the patients a chance to get to know me just a little bit - this is where i need to work my magic. i then report to one of the supervising physicians. we then go back into the room together to complete the physical exam. some docs ask the patient if it's alright if i stick around. others just introduce themselves and then re-introduce me as a medical student and just carry on.

bedside manner.

yesterday was the first day of my elective.
i won't go into too much detail about it here. let's just say that there was plenty of estrogen around - from the nursing staff, doctors and of course to the patients. then again, that probably shouldn't have suprised me considering it's called the *** Centre for Birth Control!

was exhausting, but had a great time.
did you know that abortions in canada are completely LEGAL at any point in the pregnancy? that surprised me. i knew they were legal but not that there's no real set cut-off.
having said that, the large majority of clinics won't perform a termination after about 14 weeks. i'm told that after roughly 14 weeks, the fetus becomes too big to be discarded in the biomedical wastes bin and requires it's own casket and burial which is - to quote - "a pain in the ass".

i was also surprised by the types of people coming in for an abortion. i was naive to think that it'd be all 14 or 15 year old girls. actually they were probably of the minority. the youngest i saw was about 17 i think. there were a lot of middle-aged women coming in that just didn't want another baby. simple as that.
funny how there are thousands if not millions of women out there that spend heaps of $$$ on ART (assisted reproductive technology) and yet here are these women that are just looking to get rid of their unwanted baby. isn't life so unfair and cruel?

on a perkier note: i had the opportunity to (among other things) take a patient history. i was a little nervous but the first one went quite well. i had a patient who was really easy to talk to. she was the perfect lady to "pop my cherry".
;)
she actually even commented on my bedside manner! well, at least UQ seems to be teaching something right!