naughty or nice...

we put up our christmas tree this weekend.
before...

after...


as you can see, santa claus has already dropped by & has left some gifts under the tree. he was also kind enough to label the gifts so that we don't get confused/fight over them.

i had a quick peek through all the gifts but i couldn't find anything with my name on it. :(

dejected, i was ruffling around in the kitchen and guess what i found... my label.

don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. on one hand, it could mean that santa just hasn't put my name on anything yet. i mean, he still does have 2.5 days of shopping. on the other hand... hm... i'm pretty sure i wasn't THAT naughty this year...

come to think of it, i can't remember what i got for x'mas last year!!! did i even get anything???

still love the white stuff.

my aunt & uncle are away for another week or so for my cousin's graduation (stella's a doctor now!!!).

so after yesterday's snow storm my brother and i went over to their house to shovel their snow. before...

and after...

:)

toronto: the good & the bad.

the GOOD.
starting around thursday night, we got 15cm of snow. it was a white out! we're expecting another storm starting tonight at midnight. yay!

the GOOD.
toronto police are now the best paid in the province. by 2010 a first-class constable will earn $81,249. good for them. in my opinion, they put their lives on the line day in and day out and are deserving of every penny. if david miller wants to talk about not having enough money in the budget, we can start looking at cutting his $163,040 salary.

the GOOD.
last night went to go see toronto symphony orchestra's rendition of Handel's Messiah. i enjoyed it very much. it was made sweeter by the fact that through tsoundcheck i got $79 tickets for $24 each!

the GOOD.
after the concert, i drove my date home. the roads were a mess, but that just meant that i had an excuse to drive slowly. :) just as we got to her place, the car in front of me got stuck on the mini off-ramp. so i grabbed my shovel and gave him a hand. he was stuck pretty good, but while we were digging out, 2 other cars stopped to give a hand. it wasn't even their exit, just good samaritans that stopped to help out.

the BAD.
besides the 2 cars that stopped to help out, another guy in a black gmc jimmy (i should've taken a mental note of his license plate) stopped and offered to pull out the stuck driver... for $40. come on! what a jackass. if you want to help someone out of the goodness of your heart, that's great. if not, just keep driving. just keep driving man.

mount st louis moonstone...

mi hermano finished his exams on monday so we decided to hit the slopes. had a great time, took some great pictures. the weather was perfect, and best of all, it was SO EMPTY!

you can't see the ground, but i assure you that i got some air in this pic!

will you...

pass the gauze?
:)
i had one of my wisdom teeth removed the other day.
it was actually not as bad as i had imagined it to be. just some local anesthetics, a big wrench-looking tool and some gauze.

i've pretty much been limited to congee for the past few meals but it's alright. i'm just glad it's out.

check your brain!

as previously mentioned, my buddy punster is overseeing a bunch of psych research that's going on at the local university. one of the projects involves an fMRI machine, some simple response tasks and a willing volunteer. on tuesday, I was that willing volunteer.

things didn't go quite as smoothly as initially planned. the MRI technician was over an hour late because of traffic. and if that wasn't enough, there was a very brief power outage that left me stuck in the fMRI machine.
:(
but all's well that ends well. in the end i got paid a decent amount of money and even better, got to keep my scans!

i wish i could show you all the scans but that would require a software download and a whole lot of work.

pretty cool huh???

rugby? who needs rugby?!?!

so on saturday, the leafs held a news conference to announce their new general manager and president Brian Burke.

i gotta say, so far, i'm impressed. i was particularly impressed with his 3 "mission points".
1. exciting & entertaining brand of hockey
2. financial prudence - it's not his money that he's spending, so he'll be careful when spending it.
3. community service - Burke says that his players will be more involved in the community than ever before and if any player is unwilling to fulfill his "civic duties" he can find another place to play. i especially like this one.

bottom line is that regardless of how exciting the leafs are, how much he spends on the payroll or how much his players give back to the community, UNFORTUNATELY brian burke's time here will be evaluated based on only one thing: the number of wins - and ultimately a stanley cup win.

*****

went to church with my friend jenn today and then chilled with my cousin justin in the afternoon. we decided to go check out a marlies game. had a great time. it was an entertaining game with the marlies winning in a shootout after the 7th shooter 4-3 over the rochester americans.

you know what the BEST part was though??? captain crunch was in the house!!! by complete chance, wendel clark was at the game signing autographs. what what!!!

best idea justin's come up with in about 6 years i think.

***so sore...***

after back-to-back workouts (cardio plus weights) for the first time in ages, my body is NOT impressed with me at all right now. my abs are KILLING me. it hurts to sneeze, it hurts to laugh, heck, it hurts to twist around and wipe my butt! >.<

i must be getting old... :(

new pet peeve.

students that leave their stuff to "save" their spot and disappear for extended periods of time.

so today i'm at robarts, just to switch things up a little. i came in just before 1pm after working out with my brother. being exam time and all, the library is pretty busy. the slackers tend to show up 2 weeks before exam period.
:p
but what i really want to rant about is how everyone dumps their stuff on chairs and desks and then LEAVES! no lies here, 1/3 of the seats in the reading rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor have jackets/notes/umbrellas/power adapters/highlighters, but NO BODIES!!!

i mean if you're going out for 2 minutes to use the toilets or even 5 minutes to answer a phone call that's cool. but don't leave your stuff here then go off for a 45 minute chat session with your girlfriends. don't leave your stuff here and then head out for your 3 hour lecture. and yes the hot dog vendor/chinese food truck is JUST outside, but don't leave your stuff here to go out for a meal.
case in point, the table next to me has 2 power adapters, 3 jackets, 1 backpack and a whole pile of notes. the girls that are/were sitting there haven't returned since i got here - which was 90+ minutes ago!!!

if everyone actually took their stuff with them when they left there'd be plenty of space for everyone when people actually need it!!!

i wish the library could police this. but it's near impossible to do so. aside from the lack of man power, how would they know how long these people are gone for - although to a trained eye, that can be pretty obvious:
if there is no jacket and just some loose sheets of paper with a few pens, chances are they've left for lecture or a long meal. no jacket means they have LEFT the building. definite grounds for a boot in the butt.
if there IS a jacket, well chances are they are in the cafeteria yakking it up.

maybe we could do what parking enforcement does. a librarian comes by once or twice an hour and chalks the desk/back of seat or whatever. if you've been chalked but you're not back by the time the librarian comes around again, your stuff gets taken to the front desk where you have to go and re-claim your stuff. you could add a $25 fine for good measure.

an even better idea would be to increase the amount of theft that occurs at these libraries. if we could only get these theives to steal not just laptops, cell phones and wallets but also textbooks, handwritten notes, pencil cases and coffee mugs. :)

yo check this out! part 3.

i have a friend. i'm going to give him a pseudonym - just in case. let's call him "punster" because he's good with puns.

anyways... so punster is the head of some research labs at UofT. he was showing me around his new labs and we came across the coolest thing EVER. in one of the labs there was a driving simulation machine. and i got to try it!

it was so cool. when you turn the ignition on, the car and steering wheel hum just like a real car. from the master computer, you can control the weather, the amount of light, the amount of traffic, you name it and you can control it. it was quite real.

that brought a smile to my face. and i thought i'd share that with you. :)

bitin' the bullet.

so i'm at the library at UofT. yes you heard me. i'm at the UofT LIBRARY. gerstein to be exact.

why??? well, cause i booked my USMLE test date yesterday and it's time to get my butt back to the books. :(
it's weird being back though. seems like nothing has changed since i was here for undergrad. i might start keeping a tally again. for the record it's going to be 9-5 study days to start and then i'll slot in week nights and weekends once pat starts his exam study. if you're on campus come find me. i'll most likely be at robarts or gerstein.

we got our first major snow fall last night. little parkette by my house...


UofT king's circle with university college in the background.

isn't it beautiful??? :)

feels good to be home!

after about 33+ hours of travel, i am HOME. it's so good to be home. weather is cold. thermometer in the car was reading -6 degrees. there was also some light snow. nowhere near enough to accumulate but just enough to bring a smirk to my face. i know toronto is a big city but it seems humongous compared to brisbane. there seems to be more cars, more people, more skyscrapers, more everything.

my house is completely different from when i left last january. most noticeably, the gray carpets have been replaced with shiny new hardwood. i love it. there's also a huge 47" lcd tv in the living room and my brother has a sparkling new desktop with a huge 20" flat screen - which i'm on right now. i suspect that my parents may have had some sort of cash infusion of which i am unaware of. hm... ??? maybe it's from not having to feed their eldest!
:)
the last leg of my flight was long. really long. like 15 hours long. but i was incredibly lucky and got a seat in the emergency row. if you're ever flying in an airbus 340-600, ask for seats in row 20 - so much leg room it's not even funny.

Abu Dhabi. 11:36pm local time

i'm now in abu dhabi.
it's not quite as flashy and luxurious as i had imagine it to be. there is free wireless internet though! :)

the terminal has this fishbowl/bathtub feel to it with navy blue & lime green tiles that extend from the floor all the way up to the domed roof. i want to take a picture for you but there is a "no photos" sign. i could probably plead ignorance but let's not try that.

it's also packed. Despite being almost midnight, there are more people here now than there were this afternoon in Brisbane. I don't think this airport sleeps. On the depature board right now, there are flights every hour until 6:50am.

On tv Djokovic is giving Davydenko a pretty good whipping. Don't know what tournament it is though.

i'm pretty pooped.
next stop: HOME!

Singapore. 6:26pm local time

I’m about a ¼ of the way home. After about 8 hours of flight I’m now in Singapore for a 1 hour fueling stop.

So far this etihad flight has been awesome. The food is really good, the TV screens are huge and the headphones aren’t the crappy rigid foamy ones you get on air Canada. They even have complimentary alcohol! Man, that’s ol’ school service right there! i had a glass of white wine with lunch :)

Something that I found interesting: right before taking off, along with the safety announcements, they had a travel prayer from the Qur’an. i have no idea what exactly was said in the prayer (i'm pretty sure it was in Arabic) but I found that quite interesting.

Next stop: Abu Dhabi.

looking back...

in a few days i fly back home. back to family, back to friends, back to the cold. :)

i gotta say, it's been a good year. some highlights include:
-shaving my head bald for leukemia research
-trip to Fraser island
-painting my toe-nails :)
-pat's visit and mini reunion in adelaide
-finding a church
-bridge to brisbane
but most importantly, it's been a year of good friends, good food and good times. (sounds like a kelsey's commercial or something!)

as i look back on year 2, i would like to think that i've grown.
around this time last year i was feeling pretty smug about myself cause i had made "big steps" in my life. i learned to cook my own food, wash & iron my own clothes and really live independently.
but this year i'd like to think that i leave australia with not only more medical knowledge in my brain but hopefully as someone who's grown in character and maturity. mmm... maybe that's stretching it a little. :)

t-minus: 2 days, 3 hours and 35 minutes until my flight!

blah...

so i'm all done second year.
at this time last year i was getting wasted in the red room.
this year i didn't have a single drop. part of that was cause i forgot my id and couldn't get in. but the other reason is cause i just don't feel as ecstatic about being done as i did last year. i don't know why.

i don't think i did poorly. it's not that.
i dunno what it is... just feels so anti-climatic. ???
maybe i'm just tired. i'm going to take a nap. :)

0 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes.

why the heck am i blogging at this point in time?  to be honest, just to try and keep myself sane... :s

i could not sleep last night.  i went to bed a little earlier than usual at 10:30pm thinking i'd try and get a good 7.5-8 hours of sleep.  now normally i couldn't count to 100 before dozing off but last night i laid their for well over 1/2 an hour.

i'm not sure if it was the nervousness or the coke that i had during dinner (the kind that you drink through your mouth and not the kind you snort through your nose) but i couldn't sleep.  the only reason i think it might've been the coke is that my caffeine tolerance is zilch.  i don't drink any coffee, barely tea and the last time i had a coke with my meal was probably a few months back when pat was here.

i think i finally fell asleep just after 11.  but this morning, i woke up at 4am.  4!  i was so alert that i contemplated just getting up and reviewing some stuff but i forced myself back to bed.  i laid in bed for the next hour & a half, 1/2 sleeping and 1/2 awake.  so now i'm up for good.  and as alert as can be. just hope this adrenalin-induced buzz doesn't wear off until after 11am today.

:s

1 day, 10 hours, 56 minutes

not a whole lot of time left before my exams. normally at this stage i've given up hope and just want to get the stupid thing over with but this year i find myself still reviewing and still looking over stuff - dare i say still LEARNING. i don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. maybe it means that i'm not quite as prepared as i would like to be and there is still plenty of stuff to learn. or perhaps it means that for some reason, i care just a little bit more than usual. hm... i sure hope it's the latter.

had my MSATs (multiple station assessment tests) yesterday. i think they went ok. no major blunders.  my simulated stations were...

• history taking: patient complaining of chest pain
• clinical physical exam: patient with distended abdomen
• ethics/communication station: obtaining consent from a patient scheduled in for surgery
• clinical reasoning station: patient complaining of shortness of breath on exertion, examinations & investigations pointing towards some sort of anemia/hematological origin
• ALS/CPR station: demonstrating my CPR skills, as well as my ability to use a defib, use drugs (adrenalin, atropine, amiodarone), etc...

now i've just got these two big written ones on tuesday and wednesday.  wish me luck!

obama!

he's done it!
i get goosebumps just thinking about it.

sorry i forgot...

ahahahahahaha!!!
my brother just sent this to me.

9 days, 7 hours, 58 minutes.

OMG.
single digit days left. i'm not going to have enough time. :s

i did get some good study in though. clocked in at FIFTY, that's right 50 hours this week. next weeks goal is up to 55.

spent the day covering ethics, EBM and public/population health stuff... euthanasia, Gillick competence, confidentiality, involuntary admission/treatment, determinants of health, notification, screening tests, sensitivity/specificity/likelihood ratios, prevention, geriatric giants & elderly care, negligence & trespass, counter-transference, refusal of treatment, stages of behavioral change, motivational interviewing, breaking bad news, assessment of depression/suicide/alcohol abuse, immunization, child abuse, organ donation, ethical boundaries... what else was there...???

back to the science stuff tomorrow.

hopes vs. goals.

someone recently asked me what my hopes were. and for awhile i was stumped. i know what my goals are. i can give you a breakdown of my goals in order of importance, or in chronological order, or in order of difficulty or whatever! but hopes? i'm not too sure.

what's the difference anyway?
are they the same except for that with one you have a certain amount of control and your actions can dictate the results (goals) while your actions for the other are quite inconsequential with regards to the result (hope)? do we hope for things which are out of our control? does hope involve more fate? more chance? a higher being?

we don't say: my GOAL is to have healthy children.
instead we say: i HOPE to have healthy children.
we have no control over whether or not our children are healthy. sure there are certain things we can do to increase the likelihood of good health, but there's nothing that guarantees good health.

is that it? is that the difference???

so what are my hopes in life?
i dunno. let me get back to you on that.

the end is near...

today was our last day of PBL. weird. this year seems to have passed much too quickly. feels like it was even shorter than 1st year.

left to right... steve, adrian, me, chris, leah, carl, linda, vanessa, drew (our PBL tutor) & margie.

had a scary thought last night... so now that classes are winding down, i do 95% of my learning and studying at home. a typical day might look something like this...
alarm goes off at 6am. press snooze.
finally give in and wake up around 6:20.
toilet. glass of milk. move stuff out to dining room table. check e-mail & facebook. start study 7am.
study for hour - hour and a half.
breakfast.
study for hour - hour and a half.
shower.
study for hour - hour and a half.
lunch.
study for 2-3 hours.
get out of the house. this is what keeps me sane. well, that's assuming i'm still sane. usually some sort of exercise: basketball, throwing a football with matt, a jog, QT with a church friend.
dinner at 6:30pm.
clean up, mingle with roommates, settle down for more study around 8pm.
usually get another 3 hours of study in.
in bed between 11pm and midnight with about 8 hours of total study for the day.
good productive day right?

last night, as i got into bed, i lay there thinking... hm... what did i learn today? and i drew a complete BLANK. NOTHING came to my head. but fortunately as the panic crept in, SLEEP came into save me and i fell asleep. i was out cold. :s

we'll see if i can remember any of what i studied today. :)

smile.

turandot.

opera last night was quite good.

a quick rundown of the plot:
there is a princess by the name of Turandot. she is unmarried. there are many suitors but she is not interested in getting married to any of them. in order to avoid marriage, she poses 3 questions to the eligible bachelor. if and only if he answers all 3 questions correctly can the bachelor marry. if he answers any of the questions incorrectly he is beheaded.

we are introduced to Calaf (the male lead) just as the prince of Persia is about to be decapitated. Calaf is a prince in exile from Tartary. despite warnings from everyone around him including his father (Timur) and his father's salve (Liu) - who has a crush on Calaf, he proceeds to strike the gong 3 times to signal that he is a willing contestant.

he answers the three questions correctly:
1. what is born each night and dies each dawn? hope.
2. what flickers red and warm like a flame, yet is not fire? blood.
3. what is like ice but burns? Turandot!
surprised, Turandot begs her father not to give her away to this stranger. Calaf in hopes of winning her over offers her a question of his own - what is his name? if she answers correctly, then no marriage and Calaf is beheaded. if her answer is incorrect, they get married.

many try to bribe Calaf but to no avail. eventually they capture Timur and Liu. as they are about to torture Timur for the answers, Liu cries out that she is the only one that knows this "stranger's" identity. but that she won't reveal it. she then commits suicide to keep the secret.

everyone else goes to bury Liu. but Turandot stays to comfort Calaf. they embrace and Turandot feels emotion for the first time. Calaf confident that he won't be beheaded, tells her his identity and gives her the power to decide what to do with him. when the time comes to announce the identity of the stranger, despite knowing his real name she says... "his name is... LOVE!" (pretty cheesy i know!)

so he lives and they live happily ever after. :)

*****
overall the production was good. i really enjoyed it. but i gotta say that the male lead and female lead were overshadow by a great performance by Hye Seoung Kwon as Liu. Marian Talaba's (Calaf) rendition of Nessum Dorma was unimpressive at best. :( and i swear, i'm not being biased because she was korean. she was actually VERY good. and it was clear by the audience reaction when the performers were out for their curtain call. had a good time. much better than miss saigon last year.

16 days, 14 hours, 3 minutes.

solid study week. clocked in at 42 hours total. :) but there's still so much more do to!!!
next week's goal: 45 hours.

off to watch turandot at qpac tonight. doesn't ring a bell? maybe this'll help.


and if THAT doesn't help, surely this must...

23 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes...

had a good study week. started off a little slow but really hit my stride thursday, friday and saturday. managed 33 hours with a much better "study : hours-at-desk" ratio. :)
next week's goal: 35+ hours.

side note: can't remember the last time i've done any sort of exercise.

psych!

this afternoon, as part of our clinical coaching session we spent some time in the mental health ward of our hospital. it was a sneak peek into psychiatry. and to be honest it was exactly what i expected... fascinating but also quite scary.

we started off in our coach's office. it was a huge corner office, i was impressed to see that patient charts and folders overflowing with sheets of paper didn't cover every square inch of his desk or his floor or his chairs. our coach was probably mid-50s, well-dressed and like many in the medical profession, a blackberry addict. his crackberry must've went off about 3 or 4 times within the first 1/2 hour.

although very nice and clearly very well educated there was something about him that made me slightly uncomfortable. for starters, he spoke REALLY fast. he also kept saying "you know..." think of alicia silverstone in "clueless" from back in the day. now replace all the "like" with the words "you know". that was our coach. lastly, he just seemed a little... anxious. he didn't have any characteristic tics but he just couldn't sit/stand still. he kept fidgeting with his marker or the chair or whatever he could get his hands on.
i can't help but think that maybe his patients have rubbed off on him JUST a little bit.

after running through how to take a history on a psychiatric patient, we actually went to go see one. i'll be completely honest, i was nervous. and it didn't help with my coach saying as we started walking out of his office... "let's go see if we can chat with a few patients. should be fine. you guys will be safe." SAFE?!?!?! nobody mentioned anything about being UNSAFE! i was worried.

once on the ward it didn't get much better.  i'm sure we reeked of fear. all the patients stared at us as we walked by.  some of the patients were curious (?) audacious (?) enough to come over to where we were standing and strike a little conversation with us.  when we introduced ourselves to the patients i didn't even give them my real name despite my ID badge hanging conspicuously from my belt loop.  what a douche!  (in my defense, i was the last to introduce myself and no one before me gave their real names!)

the patient we interviewed was quite interesting.  he left home at a young age and has split time living on the streets, shelters or mental health wards like this one.  without going into too much detail, he suffers from schizophrenia and believes that he is a messiah. some of the things he told us: he used to speak with bill gates, stephen hawkin, bill clinton and many others on a regular basis on an internet forum.  he had powers of exorcism but these powers - along with his musical talents, have dissipated since he's been on his anti-psychotic meds.

i've always thought psychiatry to be incredibly engaging and interesting but i never really could see myself specializing in it. not to be crude but don't think i could work with crazy people all the time.  having said that though, i can't seem to strike psych off my "potential specialties list". there's something about it that i like which i can't quite put my finger on.

well, we get a 8 week block in mental health next year.  i definitely look forward to it - but with a healthy dose of apprehension of course. :)

to pee or not to pee.

have you ever noticed that after swimming you want to pee? well, here is the physiological reasoning behind it. when you're swimming, your body is in a state of weightlessness. this means that the blood that normally pools at your extremities due to gravity, returns to your heart. this increase in venous return leads to increased blood pressure. the baroreceptors and stretch receptors in your body take note of this increase and makes adjustments. one of the changes that occurs is the release of a hormone from your heart called atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP). in a nutshell, ANP inhibits the reabsorption of sodium and water from your kidneys - so you get more urine production!

how cool is that?!?!
if i had only known this when i was still swimming... i could shout back at my coach that i wasn't just going to the toilet to "get out of practice" and that i legitimately NEEDED TO PEE!
ahh... if i knew then the things that i know now... :)

hotel sisley open for 2009.

so we finally found out today our clinical schools/hospitals for 2009. to my great relief i got RBH, the school that I wanted. yay! YAY! YAY!!! this means that i get to stay in this great big old house with my great big old roommates (seriously, some of my roommates are great, some are big and some are old... kekeke) and our great big-portioned meals!

but what does this mean to you? well it means that you'll have a place to rest your head if you ever want to come and visit! we've had a LOT of people call our house home over the last year... i think about 15 or so... let's see, there is of course matt, susan, laura, alan and myself. we've had friends over: yi, angela, mike, jenn, judy, melissa. we've had boyfriends - well not MY boyfriends... sean and bryan. we've also had some family over... my brother pat, alan's brother arthur and susan's cousin maggie & her mom. tally that all up and that's... 17!

whether you decide to visit or not next year, i'm just happy i get to stay another year here at the sisley house.
:)

29 days, 14 hours, 28 minutes.

total study this week: 26 hours.
total hours spent sitting at my desk: probably closer to 40 hours.
i know. that's weak.

next week's goal: 30+ hours of REAL STUDY.

canadian politics.

can't really say i've been keeping up with the canadian election.
as a matter of fact, i decided i couldn't be bothered to photocopy my passport/visa/photo ID or whatever was required of me to vote via snail mail. but this caught my eye today...

the question doesn't actually make grammatical sense though... the interviewer asks: "if you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that prime minister harper has not done?"

if i was prime minister NOW, what would i have DONE? the tenses don't match up.
does he mean if i was prime minister NOW, what would i DO? or does he mean if i was prime minister 2.5 years ago or 6 months ago or even YESTERDAY, what would i have DONE (differently)? maybe i've been spending too much time with aussies who don't use proper grammar, but i think the question was worded poorly.

speaking of aussie english... this guy Bruce Moore from ANU suggests that the distinctive (read: annoying) australian twang may be on its way out. really? is there anything i can do to speed this process?
:)
(scroll down to the bottom of the article and the writer has a handful of aussie slang, my favorite of this bunch is: shark biscuit which is slang for someone new to surfing. kekeke.)

what's up with the canadian dollar?

you have got to be kidding me.
don't know whether its the canadian dollar rising or the australian dollar falling but the canadian dollar is stronger than it's been in quite a while.

as of this afternoon... $1 CDN was valued at $1.336 AUD. $1.34!!! for crying out loud!!! when i paid my 2nd term tuition back in august it was down at about $1.05! what the flip man!!!

i know this is something that's pretty much completely out of my control and getting my knickers into a knot really doesn't do much but... GRRR!!!

36 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes.

countdown has begun for exams.
AAAHHH!!!

last week's study total: 25 hours.
this week's study goal: 30+ hours.

taxes.

just finished declaring my australian taxes. the fiscal year in australia start in july and ends in june the next year. so this year was july 1, 2007-june 31, 2008.

i should be getting $67 back. woohoo! what can i do with $67???

on a slightly funnier note: as you do your taxes you have to select your profession from a pull-down menu. some of choices included: prostitute, surfer and powder monkey. don't know what a powder monkey is? neither did i. it's really a historical term that was used for men employed to carry gun powder to canons/guns on a warship. apparently the current use refers to pretty much anyone who works with explosives.

3rd year choices...

so i've put in my preferences for my clinical school for next year. you see, years 3 and 4 are "clinically oriented" meaning that although we still have some lectures and tutorials with a few PBL sessions, for the most part all of our learning happens in the "real world" - in the hospital wards. our clinical school is where we do most of our rotations - everything except the rural rotation.

3rd and 4th year consist of five, 8-week rotations in various fields. so for example... in 3rd year, you do 8 weeks in surgery, 8 weeks in mental health, 8 weeks with a GP, 8 weeks in general/internal medicine and 8 weeks in a rural location studying (duh!) rural medicine.

my first choice for clinical school would be RBH (royal brisbane hospital) which i'm at right now but who knows. if RBH is over subscribed then i could be bumped down to my second choice (Mater Hospital), or even my third choice (Princess Alexandra Hospital). worse case scenario would be that i don't get any of my 3 choices and i get balloted out to a hospital in the 'burbs. that would suck. i'm not hating on the suburbs - but everyone knows i'm a city boy. ;) it's just that with such a placement i would have to consider commuting from where i am or even moving to avoid this commute. this could get really messy really quickly. i think i speak for the house when i say we're quite happy with our current living arrangements. i don't want to have to find another place to live next january. on that note... i was planning to write my USMLEs in late-January. but if i have to find a new pad before school starts, USMLE might have to be re-planned and pulled earlier to december (not ideal) or pushed back to sometime during the school year (also not ideal). plus, if i get shafted out of the city and end up moving... i might have to find a new church too... :(

at this point there isn't much i can do about it though. just hope and pray that i get a little lucky...

to complicate things/make things interesting... there are options/potential opportunities to do some of these rotations outside of brisbane. i'd LOVE to do these whenever/wherever possible. so for example, the surgical rotation can be done in Brunei. that's cool. the school also has an engagement - not quite a marriage ;-) with the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans which normally houses med students from Tulane University and Louisiana State University. this isn't up and running yet, but we've been told it should be by the time we're done the first 2 rotations or so. this would be sweet too. and lastly... although VERY preliminary and unfortunately unlikely to occur in time for us, it has been mentioned by the school that a relationship with NOSM (Northern Ontario School of Medicine) is in the works to let us do our rural rotation in Sudbury, Thunder Bay or the like. this would be... would be... da bomb man!!! i am keeping my fingers crossed, but i'm not holding my breath.

*****
study totals - where did these tallies go??? :)
week ending on sept 13: 16 hours.
week ending on sept 20: 20 hours.
week ending on sept 27: 16 hours.
like the canadian goose that flies south during the winter months, it is now time for me migrate out into the living room to study. ugh..,

tag-team: goljan and wall-e.

you may already know that weight-bearing exercises are important in preventing osteoporosis, especially in post-menopausal women.

as an addition to this... today, Goljan (pathology audio lectures) taught me that astronauts that are up in space for an extended period of time are prone to osteoporosis due to the lack of gravity and ultimately the lack of stress on their bones. this is why astronauts that have returned from space are carried off the spaceship (can't walk off - their bones are too fagile) and are given bisphosphonates (drugs that act by inhibiting osteoclasts which resorb bone), calcium and vitamin D.

saw "wall-e" this evening. what a cute movie. makes you want to hold someone's hand. :)
in the movie, the level of pollution has become so severe that humans now live in space aboard a ginormous spaceship. this spaceship is fully automated and people spend their whole lives on hover-chairs that take them everywhere & have mini robots that wait on them 24/7. the movie then goes on to explain that basically everyone on the ship has osteoporosis because of the lack of walking/no stress on the bones.

such a cute AND smart movie! now only if i could find that combo in a girl!
>.<
KIDDING!

official results!

the official times are finally out! 48:55 for me.

as a team we came in 161st out of 1090 teams. good job team!

there are also a few pics of me that were snapped by "paparazzo" along the race course. you can view them here.

for all you nerds out there.

thanks to susan for the link. the biggest nerd-wannabe. :)

just wanted to say...

i am grateful. and happy. for everything.

(doesn't mean i'm complacent though).

bridge to brisbane - webcast

official results are still not up but you can see me finish the race!
i should be on the right side of the screen. i'm wearing a red/burgundy sleeveless shirt and have a grey sweatband on. hope this works!

i pass the finish line around 0:20 and throw my hands in the air. and then put my hands on my head around 0:27 or so. can you see me???

if this video doesn't work, go to the bridge to brisbane website, click on the "2008 webcasts" under the "2008 results tab", you can look up anyone's name and see how they did.

gotcha!

there is a kookaburra that nests in one of the trees in front of our house. at first i found its laughing call to be annoying and slightly creepy in the mornings, but now it's just background noise.

every now and then he drops by my balcony to say hello. today i finally caught him on camera! he was kind enough to leave me a little sumthin'-sumthin' to remember him by.

grrr...

bridge to brisbane!

just got home from the RUN.
this morning we woke up at a quarter to 5, packed into 2 cars and headed east.

the run starts with a pretty steady climb up the gateway bridge... about 1.1km of incline... and then back down again. was feeling pretty good. was at the 3km mark, looked down at my watch and was a little surprised to see it read: 14:30. skipped the first water station and pushed on with mike. mike was my running partner today. it was a lot of dodging left and right. there were SO many people... i remember hearing something along the lines of 36,000 people.

we pushed on at a pretty regular pace for the next 4km or so. at about 4.5km, decided to stop for a quick drink - which was completely unnecessary and in retrospect a bad decision. at the water station, i ended up tripping over some feet/discarded cups and fell. nothing serious. i was alright.

they had one last surprise for us at about 8km. there was a tunnel and an off-ramp. down and up, up, up. was definitely feeling it at this point.
last few hundred meters were inside the ekka showgrounds. it was cool to be the runner with people lined up on either side cheering you on.

i crossed the line, and my (unofficial) time was 48:58. i went under 50 minutes! woohoo!
our official times should come out online tomorrow and will let you know when they do.

group photo post race.
aren't we a good-looking bunch?
:)

broncos 24 - knights 2.

went to my first rugby league game today. it was a lot of fun. the cheapest tickets at $19 were pretty decent and it definitely helped that the on-field product was entertaining to watch. sporting events are always much better when you're with large groups of friends...

still need to check out a game of aussie rules football and cricket.

*****
the bridge to brisbane run is in about 29 hours. as mentioned, it's a 10km run. in our training sessions matt and i have managed to run about 11km in ~59min. that's just about 5:30 minutes/kilometer. so for 10km, we should be able to do that in about 53-54 minutes. our goal is to crack the 50 minute mark. that's 5:00 min/km. a little too ambitious? nah... we can do it!

here's a map of our run.

this is too funny.

so sarah palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol, is 5 months pregnant.

i assure you that there is no judgement on my part on Bristol. you know what, sh*t happens. but what i really find amusing is the republicans and the christian right-wingers, dismissing this as a "private matter". which granted it is. but i wonder... if obama or biden had a 17-year-old daughter that was unmarried and 5 months pregnant, would the republicans say the same?

politics sure is entertaining no? should be a good couple of months of mud-slinging.

house of god.

this week is my mid-semester break. after this week, it's lockdown mode. 9 more weeks of class and then FINALS!!!
what do i have planned? not much actually. i'm actually going to try and get some work in, tie up some housekeeping stuff (sign up for USMLEs, do my taxes) and just stick around the city to take in some of the brissy culture (picasso exhibition at the art gallery, rock climbing, a brisbane broncos rugby league game). that's the plan.

i do plan on doing some reading though. some non-med-related reading. sort of. today i finished off this book called "the house of god" by samuel shem (pseudonym for stephen bergman). it's this ancient book, and by ancient i mean from the late 70s... about the life of an intern. i read it cause it kept coming up... my clinical coach mentioned it, ifinding mentions it, older med students have mentioned it... i guess you could liken it to vincent lam's "bloodletting and miraculous cures". that book - although, in my opinion was not very good and unworthy of the giller prize - is unofficially considered to be a must-read for all life sci/"pre-med" students at UofT.
i'm told "house of god" is mandatory reading for all med students and interns. it starts off quite cynical and vulgar but in the end i can see what all the hype is about. in the end it's sort of romantic. a little bit of a love story. i enjoyed it.

on an unrelated note... the NFL season starts this week. and many are predicting the dallas cowboys to win it all. romo-owens-barber. are these the new "triplets" that'll take us back to the good ol' days of the early-mid 90s? maybe.

feel the love.

i'm definitely feeling the love lately.
i recently turned 24.

at first, turning 24 didn't seem like such a big deal. but i gotta say it's been one of the best birthdays ever. as with most memorable things in my life, it involved a LOT of food. :)

it started with PBL on tuesday morning... our tutor patricia baked a chocolate cake and my friend adrian baked muffins.
on thursday, i woke up to find miyeok guk (미역국) made for me by my friend insun. how sweet!?!? after a detour to the hospital for some clinical coaching, i had a second bowl of miyeok guk courtesy of another friend, mikyung. after that, i came home, and waddaya know, it's dinner time. alan made dinner and then susan made FUNNEL CAKES for dessert!!!

to top things off, my roommates threw a bbq for me today. i invited some school friends and my "small" group from church. dinner was good. we had mandoo, chicken wings, sausages, salad... for my birthday cake, sean baked a vanilla-coconut cake. it was delish!

if the food and the company wasn't good enough, i got some wicked gifts... my church friends got me a bible, a book, a hillsongs dvd, chocolate and a gift certificate to borders (our equivalent to chapters/indigo). my roommates & school friends, got me a new PHONE! how awesome is that? i guess they felt bad for me that i was carrying a phone that lists an alarm, calculator and text msging capabilities as "features". this one is sweet... it's a samsung J750, it's a slider with bluetooth capability (which i've already set up to my mac) and a 1.3 megapixel camera. woohoO!

just want to thank everyone that came out for the bbq. everyone that wrote me a card, bonus points if it had to cross the ocean, and everyone that left me a facebook msg or a text msg. big special thanks as always, to my roommates matt, susan, sean, laura and alan. thanks for showing me the love.

wanna know what i wished for when i blew out the candles? i wished that no matter how old i am, and no matter where in the world i am, that i will always be blessed with such great friends.

canada finally has some medals.

we may be late to the party. but we're here. finally. thank you to Carol Huynh, Dave Calder & Scott Frandsen and Tonya Verbeek. we now have more medals than mongolia (2), ethiopia (1) and kyrgyzstan (2). however, we still trail some powerhouse countries like north korea (5), cuba (8), zimbabwe (4), azerbaijan (5) and kazakhstan (5).

this is pathetic.

*****
my totals for the week.
study: 10 hours
running: 30.2 km

did some hill training this week.

it's a short run (2.46km) but there are 2 huge hills on carmody road. one at munro street and the other at raven street. we ran this circuit 3 times (total of 7.38km) with a 2 minute rest in between the 2nd and 3rd laps.

next week's goals.
study: 15 hours
running: 35 km

good tacky fun.

as mentioned, yesterday was a holiday. if i don't say so myself, we used it quite well... we started off with some spring cleaning. we gave the kitchen & bathroom a good cleaning, vacuumed everywhere and even cleared our driveway of all the leaves.

after that we headed out to the ekka. it was basically like the CNE in toronto and exactly what we had expected. tacky and expensive. but still silly fun.

cheese!

we ate deep fried foods...

rode carnie rides...

and stuck around for the fireworks.

it was good. but like the Ex, it's really not something worth going more than a few times in your life. every so often the tackiness is fun but after awhile, the tackiness gets, well... tacky!

gotta stop mucking around.

people say that time flies when you're having fun.
i've got news for you all. time flies regardless of whether you're having any fun or not. i haven't done anything terribly interesting or exhilarating in the last 8 weeks and yet i have no idea where all the time has gone.

matt and i were talking about adding up all the hours in a week and looking at where the majority of our time is spent. here is my spread...

there are 168 hours in a week.
DAILY LIVING: i give myself 10 hours of each day sleeping, eating (cooking & cleaning included), grooming, dressing, toilet breaks & all the other knick-knacks of that sort that suck up time. so that's 70 hours in a week.
SCHOOL: on average i spend probably about 20 hours in class per week. this includes travel time to and from school/hospital.
STUDY: lately i spend at best (this is so sad) about 14 hours/week studying on my own.
CHURCH: church has been playing a bigger role in my life lately and probably accounts for something close to 7 hours/week.
INTERNET: let's say i spend 2 hours/day messing around on-line. this includes facebook, gmail, my blog, globe&mail, etc. that's 14 hours/week.
EXERCISE: let's say 6 hours/week. this includes the warm-up & warm-down time and includes the post run shower.
SOCIAL: going out for movies, meeting up with friends, dinners, birthdays, etc. probably about 10 hours/week.
TV: even though i restrain myself to a maximum of 2 scrubs episodes per day that still adds up to about 7 hours/week.
WEEKLY LIVING: things like grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc. 7 hours/week.

that's a total of 155 hours. (70+20+14+7+14+6+10+7+7=151) that still leaves 13 hours that are unaccounted for. chances are it's probably spent in the INTERNET column or DAILY LIVING column.

there's no point doing an exercise like this if you're not going to set new goals. without goals, it's just a big waste of time and another form of procrastination.

so... for the next few weeks, i'm going to find my lost 13 hours and try to put that into my study column. as the exam nears, hopefully the hours under the study column will progressively increase. daily living, school, church, weekly living and even exercise are not really negotiable. i still need to bathe and eat. and i still need to stay sane. internet can easily go down to 7 hours/week (an hour a day) if not more. social can probably be cut in half to 5 hours/week and TV will eventually get down pretty close to 0. that should give me another 19 hours.

here's to time management!

tally it up!

i'm going to start counting hours again. i spend loads of hours at my desk but haven't been very efficient.

i started counting hours roughly 8 weeks before my mid-year exams. considering i have about 13 weeks until the end-of-year exams & since it's already tuesday (and tomorrow is ekka - which i might actually check out this year), i'll start at a VERY modest goal of 10 hours of SOLID study for this week.

giddy up!

what what!!!

remember this guy???

yup.  he pulled it off.  GOLD in the 400m freestyle.  swwweeeeeettt!!!

aussie english lesson #10

i've been meaning to put these up for quite awhile now. sorry it took me so long.

hotting up - modifying or "souping" up a car.
adrian: i thought about hotting up my car.
me: what? this hunk o' junk?

punt - to take a guess, take a stab
chris: um... due to compression of the facial nerve?
clinical coach: no.
chris: oh well, i was just taking a punt.
clinical coach gives him a serious stare down.

crack it - get mad, go nuts
if our clinical coach cancels on us again, i'm gonna crack it.

similarly... cracked a tanty - throw a tantrum
leah: i had to cut my dog's nails this weekend and he just completely cracked a tanty.

sanga - short for sandwich
me: i'm hungry.
carl: well go and get something. they have pies, coffee, sangas...
me: huh?

stacked it - fall really hard
oh man, did you see that guy? he just stacked it!

chuck a sicky - call in sick, play hooky
i'm not feeling like going in today. maybe i'll just chuck a sicky.

apparently you can chuck a lot of things. for example chuck a chu-ey means, pull a U-turn.

get your kit off - take your clothes off
a very inappropriate way to ask a woman to remove her clothes during a well woman check would be to say, "hey! get yo kit off!"

camp - gay
he's looking awfully camp today isn't he?

zebra - crosswalk, pronounced ZEBra not ZEEbra

fringe - hairline, bangs

*****

EDIT

11:47pm watching the opening ceremonies of beijing 2008.  canada's come out but australia and korea haven't yet.  i'm pretty pooped though, don't know if i'll last much longer.

12:53am just saw korea come out.  was a little disappointed to see the north and south come out separately.

1:13am finally.  australia and china have come out.

1:44am i'm tired of waiting for them to light this silly flame.  i'm done.  good night.

shooting my own foot.

last night we had a CaRMS information seminar put on by the SOM. our speaker was Sandra Banner who is the executive director and CEO of CaRMS. she basically talked about the process of matching and going back to canada once we're done, and what our chances were according to the stats.
i found it to be quite useful.
between this and the international students night a few weeks back, i'm feeling the love from UQ. it actually seems like they care!

now i know i shouldn't be complaining but... sandra had mentioned that the results on the MCCEE (medical council of canada evaluating exam) - the exam that all doctors who studied outside of canada have to write, is not always indicative of getting a residency spot. as a matter of fact, canadians studying abroad (CSA), tend to do worse on the MCCEE than say foreign doctors looking to immigrate to canada. however CSA, statistically speaking tend to have a better chance at matching. off the record, sandra went as far as to suggest that there may be some bias in favour of CSAs. yes. this is a good thing for me. BUT, if we're going to use the MCCEE as a measuring stick, shouldn't we stick by it?
there could be other legitimate reasons as to why CSAs have a better chance. these might be less quantifiable. for example, perhaps (in general) our english is better. perhaps we're younger & less likely to have families and hence have more flexibility in terms of where we go and what we do. or maybe we're able to connect with the interviewers better through common topics like... how much the leafs suck, how bloody cold it is in january or how there's nothing to do in the prairies (yes. that includes alberta). ;p
overall, the seminar was informative and fairly positive.

the only sore spot on the night was this complete tool that was sitting in the back asking questions. it wasn't the questions that he asked, but the way he asked them. he was bordering on belligerent. i thought sandra gave us a great talk and was incredibly helpful. he was just being ultra aggressive and unnecessarily defensive. i blame his faults on his parents. tsk tsk. it's unfortunate because it's idiots like him that are the most vocal and in the end he's a reflection of the canadians at UQ. worse part is that he introduces himself as being from toronto when he's actually from BRAMPTON. for all of you aussies out there, i assure you that he is not representative of canadians. nor of torontonians. he MAY be a correct reflection of bramptonians. i'm afraid i don't know enough people from brampton to confidently comment though. ;)

*****
slightly related, i have a friend in 4th year from toronto who has decided that he's going to stay here. he's been offered an internship spot in wollongong in new south wales (about an hour outside of sydney). this doesn't seem like such a bad option. although his circumstances are slightly different from mine, i can see where he's coming from.

*****
let's bash on surgeons some more. my third year peer tutor told me these two:
how do you hide $50 from an orthopedic surgeon?
you put it in the patient's chart.

how do you hide $50 from a plastic surgeon?
you can't.

strike pathology off my "potential specialties" list.

had the opportunity to watch a real autopsy being performed today. needless to say, it was quite the learning experience. i won't go into all the gory details here but i will tell you that it was a much different from the cadavers in our anatomy labs. this patient... this body... this PERSON was still... fresh. the blood was still red and her skin was still plump. sure the rigor mortis was starting to set in, but she still looked like a REAL person. like someone who's just asleep.

i'm glad for the experience. but forensic pathology is just not my cup of tea.

oh jenny, jenny, jenny.

in our PBL discussions today, the "vaccines cause autism" statement came up. it seems like the most recent celebrity to take up this cause is jenny mccarthy.

*****
dearest jenn,
i think it's fantastic that you've "cured" your son of autism. kudos to you. really. i'm glad you've done your research and showed your child the motherly love that so many of our generation are missing.

however, i strongly urge you to reconsider your stance on vaccines causing autism - in particular the MMR vaccine. it's just simply not true. several scientific studies have shown that there is NO relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. unfortunately the first signs of autism often appear around the same time children receive the vaccine. it's just unfortunately coincidence. it's not a causal relationship.

the 1998 study that you seem to be referring to has been debunked. you see, that study had a very small sample size of 12 children. 12 is much too small to derive any big generalizations from. much bigger studies (498 children) have found no link. furthermore, in 2004, 10 of the 13 original authors retracted the study's interpretation. they said that the data was insufficient to establish a causal link between the vaccine and autism.

all of this info and more can be found on the website for: centers of disease control and prevention.

sincerely,
44darts.
*****

ok seriously. what is wrong with this world?!? how can someone like jenny mccarthy have such a huge effect? ok. she's a celebrity. i get that. but a B-lister at best. she's known for playing the ditzy, raunchy cheerleader role. she's a playboy centerfold for crying out loud! check that, she's 1994's playmate of the year (& props for that).
i'm not saying take my word over hers. after all, i'm just a measly 2nd year med student. but i am saying take the word of the CDC, the word of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the word of the Institute of Medicine. come on people.

what's on your desktop?

if you didn't already know, med students are a little bit OCD and well... sometimes just straight up crazy.
one of my personal OCD things is that i don't like clutter on my desktop screen. my desktop usually has no more than 3 or 4 icons at any given time. an icon for my hard drive, one for my folder of "scrubs season 4" episodes, one titled "my notes 2008" (which has all of my notes for the year) and one last folder of Kaplan videos. that's it. as an extension to this, my trash bin on my computer is always empty. i don't like it full. i don't like seeing my trash bin with the crumpled "paper" inside. i am constantly emptying my trash.

i secretly think that your desktop is a reflection of your character. (in my books, the cleanliness of your room, your car - how well it runs & how clean it is, and your teeth are also reflections of your character).

so when a prof/lecturer comes in & connects his laptop to the projector and you see the whole screen LITTERED with different icons, i immediately lose a little respect for him/her. i know. it's sad and it's bad. but i can't help it. i'm particularly disappointed if he/she is using a mac. the dock on your mac makes it SO easy to keep things organized. there is no need for mess. i don't expect much from vista users so i'm less disappointed. ;p (my roommates are going to roast me for this post).

so the next time your desktop is up and i'm peering over your shoulder... yes. i am judging you. and i'm sorry.

addition to my WANT list.

i forgot to mention something very important to my WANT list. its important because 1) this is what i WANT. and 2) because it complicates things.
here it is.
i want FOUR kids. preferably two boys and two girls. in no particular order.

*****
something unrelated...
i've realized that i haven't named my stethoscope. yes, it's true. med students/doctors name their stethoscopes. i guess i only use it about once a week right now and once i start spending more quality time with it in 3rd or 4th year, a name will come to me. but for the time being, any suggestions?

*****
EDIT: i just noticed that i DID mention the 4 kids bit already in the original post under the "NEEDS" column. i just had a bit of a brain glitch. sorry.

social contact.

on thursday night i went out for dinner with my PBL group members. had a good time. we never really do things outside of school-related stuff so it was nice to see everyone out in the "real world".
i gotta say, i really like my PBL. we all get along. people are funny, smart, and we actually give a crap. i know some other groups are completely fed up with the PBL process & just sleepwalk through the motions. sure we whinge and make excuses sometimes but for the most part, we're all there putting in the effort. i like that.

on friday night i went over to a friend's house from church. he and i are in the same small group. he had also invited a few '84s over. it was another good night.

that was 2 nights of social activities without my roommates. now i love my roommates but this was nice too.

when NOT to compliment a lady.

had my well-woman workshop today. this is where we learn how to perform a medical exam on a "healthy" woman. it's like a physical but for women. so on top of the usual things like BP check, listening to the lungs & heart, you also have a breast exam, a PAP test and a bimanual exam. so basically all the stuff i learned during my elective.

unfortunately in classic SOM (school of medicine) fashion, they managed to suck all the fun and life out of the well-woman exam. case in point, in the student preparation notes it reads:
"avoid referring to a client's breasts/vagina/cervix as beautiful/wonderful etc. this description can be interpreted as sexual in nature. a better alternative is to describe the client's vagina and cervix as healthy or normal."

healthy or normal?? how mundane.
besides, women LOVE creepy doctors that comment on the attractiveness of their private parts. no? ladies, back me up here!
;p

give me my money!

i finally got my OSAP for the school year. in case you didn't know i started in january. JANUARY! that was 6 months ago! goodness gracious. silly government.

did you know... that the provincial government of alberta provides it's students upwards of $30,000/year in student loans. compare that with OSAP which gives you a measly $8400. pft!

back on the horse.

after a week's hiatus, went running again today. went to the city and back.
it was brisk.
(i'll let you decide whether i'm referring to my running speed or the outside temperature).

5 year, 10 year, 25 year plan?

i've been sitting on this post for a few days. don't feel like i'm getting my ideas out coherently but i thought i'd just go ahead and post it.

*****
been thinking about my future quite a bit lately.
not just about what i want to specialize in or what my first car is going to be (i'm thinking something on par with a mini cooper s???). been thinking about marriage, kids, career...

well the marriage & kids part usually requires another consenting female. put that on my need-to-obtain list. the dilemma boils down to all the things that i WANT to do & all the things that i feel i NEED to do.

so what do i NEED to do?

• pay off my ever increasing debt.
  
• get married early enough to have 4 kids without the repercussions and the associated health risks with having kids at an old age.  (yes i said FOUR kids.  and yes, i will find someone agreeable to this! :p)

and my WANTs...

• Canadian Forces. i started looking into the canadian forces in an attempt to find a way into med school. then i started looking at it as a way for me to pay off my tuition in a hurry (there is a decent sized signing bonus). but the more i think about it, i think i WANT to do. for lack of a better word, i think it'd be... cool. ok, i won't lie. i think it'd be pretty cool to fire a live weapon. what can i say? i'm just a little boy at heart. plus you get to see parts of the world you'd never get to see otherwise! i'm not saying i want to be an army guy for the rest of my life. just for a few years.
  
• i also want to do something like MSF for a year or two. ideally it'd be with a organization that has no political or religious agenda.
  
• start the next phase of my life. i want my own family. my own wife, my own kids, my own dog, my own house & my own porsche sitting in the driveway.

as you can see there is no order in my wants and needs. some of the things i want can't go with some of the things i need - how am i possibly going to pay off my tuition when VOLUNTEERING for a group like MSF??? heck, some of the things of the same list aren't even compatible with each other! i don't want to be in somewhere in afghanistan when i have a family with kids!

i think this guy sums up what i'm feeling deep down. (thanks mike for the heads up). hopefully i can look back in 5,10 or even 25 years and think, yes it was worth every night-in. every stress-induced freak out. worth every single sacrifice.

don't know why i feel like my head clock is ticking louder than ever. can't you hear that? it's going TICK! TOCK! TICK!! TOCK!!
i know i'm getting WAY ahead of myself and that i just need to take things step-by-step. my dad used to tell us this all the time...

i stole this photo shamelessly & without permission from my friend julie's facebook profile pic. it translates into something along the lines of... let's be happy. and... do when you do. as in play when you're supposed to play, and work when you're supposed to work. i'm pretty sure i'm supposed to work right now.

pretty good.

just got home from watching the dark knight. i thought it was pretty good. heath was pretty crazy. probably the best movie i've seen all winter (north american summer). better than iron man, better than kung fu panda and DEFINITELY better than indy. i hear that wall-e is quite good, but that doesn't open up down under until mid-september or so!
but this movie's left a bad taste in my mouth. i feel that making this movie definitely could've pushed heath over the edge or at least contributed. i know it was an "accidental overdose", but...

Etihad!

don't worry. i didn't just swear at you in some foreign language. etihad is actually the airline that i'll be taking home in november! yay! it ONLY cost me a smidgeon over $2400. it's pretty direct, i fly brisbane to abu dhabi and then from abu dhabi to toronto.
i know what you're thinking. "i've never even heard of etihad before. and where the heck is abu dhabi???"
Abu Dhabi is actually the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is the 2nd largest city behind Dubai. my layover is only a few hours but i've never been to the UAE so it'll be cool.
as for Etihad, it's a fairly new airline. it was founded in 2003 and is actually the national airline of the UAE. it's in direct competition with it's 'older brother' Emirates Airlines. from what i've read so far the service is quite good and flights are never delayed.

my roommates have been busting my chops for flying with Etihad. so i did a little research. according to JACDEC (Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre), Etihad (0.00) has a better safety index than Air Canada (0.04), American Airlines (0.22), British Airways (0.03), China Airlines (1.52) or Korean Air (0.87).
For completion sake, Cathay Pacific and Qantas also have a safety index of 0.00. without going too much into detail about the math behind the safety index, simply it is the number of fatalities/terametre. a terametre is 10^12m.

so if i survived a round trip on china airlines, i should be fine on etihad. right??? right.

*****
in other news. i took my photo for trephine (which is our yearbook - only the 2nd years get a yearbook). nothing fancy, just really casual. but i think i came out looking like a huge dork. i'm sure the hair was perfect :p but i think i had this goofy little smile on my face. oh well.

*****
did you hear? the "ice...cccoooooold...beeeeeeeeer!!!" guy (his real name is wayne mcmahon but everyone calls him the ice-cold-beer-guy) from rogers centre was fired recently. all you jays fans should know who he is. apparently he sold a drink to a 22 year old mystery shopper without checking out his ID. i'm told that the policy at rogers centre is to check all ID for anyone who looks less than 30. there's now a facebook group petitioning for his job back. it's now up to 18,000 members. that's impressive.

*****
haven't been running in the last few days. partly because the weather has been lousy and partly because i've had stuff going on right around my normal jogging time - around 4 in the afternoon. but mostly because i've been a tad lazy. the last run i did was on friday to the city. that was almost 11 clicks.

it's actually a really nice run. right along the river. should probably run it again today.

gummy bears.

came home today after clinical coaching and watched some Kaplan videos while eating gummy bears.

and then i got a little bored and distracted.
>.<
ok. back to the books.

excerpts from "an imperfect offering" by james orbinski

pat had left this book for me when he came to visit. it's written by dr.orbinski, a toronto doctor who was at one point the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières. he writes about his experiences in various war-torn countries around the world - in particular rwanda. although it reads like a history textbook in some parts, there were about a dozen pages or so that i dog-eared and i just wanted to share a few of these with you here. if you get a chance, it's worth a read.

life isn't fair. (page 57)
" one day i was in a small village near Mugonero to help with a polio vaccination campaign. the clinic was in the middle of the village, and because our jeep had broken down on the way we were an hour late. babies were crying. the air was humid and heavy with the heat. still, mothers had come from all the neighbouring villages and lined up in the hundreds with their infants to get the vaccine. we'd been working for about an hour when one mother gently pushed her baby boy into my chest. he was beautiful, and so was she. she held his leg out to me. it was limp. i took the boy, and he smiled at me. he was a fat and happy baby who smelled of soap. his mother started to speak, and the nurse translated, telling me that his mother wanted me to fix his leg. she said he couldn't crawl like the other children and had been dragging the leg behind him for the last few weeks. i looked at the boy's health card as he played with my stethoscope. he had already had two doses of the vaccine. this was to be his final booster. twice his mother had bathed him in the morning and walked miles to stand all day to get him the vaccine, and twice the vaccine had failed. the problem had to be the cold chain - the vaccine had to be kept cold right up until it was used, otherwise it deteriorated. the boy started to cry, wanting to go back to his mother. "she has three daughters. he's her only son," the nurse said. i explained as gently as i could that the leg was never going to work properly. the mother stepped back from me as i spoke, holding her now happy baby to her chest. rwandans rarely cry in public. for a brief moment, tears came down her cheeks. i reached out to touch her arm. i noticed the calluses on her hands as her son wriggled to turn to face me. i felt my own soft white palms with my fingers. through the translating nurse i suggested that when the boy was older the mother could bring him to the Mugonero Hospital to see about a brace. she listened carefully, saying, "nnn, ehhh," and finally "yego" as the nurse spoke.

the nurse told me that the mother had cried because she knew her some would be a bicycle-chair boy. "but he can go to school too," i said. "no," said the nurse, "they don't have the money for both." by now the mother's few tears had dried, leaving faint white salt marks on her black face. she bowed her head to me, turned and walked away to some waiting friends. i left the line to buy a fanta, and it started to rain. the drink had been kept cold in the cooler at the roadside stand. i sat down on a big rock. the children laughed at the muzungu sitting in the rain while michael jackson's "thriller" played on a battery-powered ghetto blaster. the clinica can't keep the fucking vaccine cold, i thought, and i hoped that the rain would mask my tears. "

only humans. (page 253)
" she said that she had escaped being killed by the Interahamwe. "my mother hid me in the latrine. i saw through the hole. i watched them hit her with machetes. the men were angry and strong. i watched my mother's arm fall into my father's blood on the floor and i cried without noise in the toilet." i listened to her and watched her lips quiver as her words came at a slow, staccato tempo. i watched her brown eyes look away as tears dropped to her cheeks and i could not stop my own.

at that moment, i felt both despair and rage. despair that she knew intimately our capacity for the most extreme rational cruelty; that she was alone. animals could never do this. animals can be brutal, but only humans can be rationally cruel. we can choose anything, we can be anything, we can get used to anything, i thought. only humans can be evil. only humans can make this choice. i felt my heart pounding and i wanted a gun. i wanted to kill the men who had done this to her. i wanted to pull the trigger again and again and again. my heart was racing; i was fighting my tears, gasping for air, for freshness, for something other than this. then eli clasped my arm with his strong hands. i felt an overpowering despair for the little girl, for myself, for all of us - that we can be alone, trapped in our passions, in our reasons, in our minds, in our politics, that i and those men could be so angry and strong. "

because we can. (page 349)
" at one point during one of our meetings the minister had expressed his fascination with 'you MSF fellows and ladies. why do you do it?' he asked.
i replied immediately, 'because we can.' "