coffee? no thank you.

topic last week was drug abuse. while doing some of the readings i came across a little section on caffeine. i thought i'd share my new found knowledge with all you coffee addicts out there.

did you know that coffee is the second largest commodity traded in the world, only behind oil?!?!

caffeine is a CNS (central nervous system) stimulant which has a mechanism of action similar to amphetamines and cocaine! it increases dopamine activity within the brain and mimics adenosine. adenosine is responsible for the increases in alertness, concentration, cognitive function, blood pressure as well as mood elevation and anxiety.

with chronic toxicity you can get insomnia, GORD (gastro-oesophageal reflux disease - this is where the gastric acids from your stomach enter into your oesophagus and irritate your oesophagus), atrial arrythmias (where the atria of your heart beat in an uncoordinated/irregular manner) and difficulty conceiving. there's also an established association with babies of low birth weight.

caffeine is also associated with high cholesterol levels - lipids in coffee aren't removed by espresso machines or during the decaffeination process.

physical dependence can result in withdrawal symptoms. these include: irritability, headaches, restlessness, fatigue, poor concentration & muscle stiffness.

BUT there is SOME good news. withdrawal symptoms are usually seen when you consume more than 350mg of caffeine each day. how much is 350mg of caffeine?
a can of coca-cola contains ~40mg.
a can of red bull contains ~80mg.
a cup of instant coffee comes in at ~70mg.
and a strong cup of espresso contains ~120mg.
so as long as you're having maybe a cup of coffee in the morning, those withdrawal symptoms are unlikely. but if you're having 3 or more... well you might just be entering the DANGER ZOOOOOOONE!

i think i've found a church.

i don't know if you remember or if i ever even told you in the first place but when i got here last january, i looked around for a korean church to attend regularly. i didn't have much luck. so instead i went to a church on campus with my roommate matt for awhile. but that didn't quite work out either.

i had sort of given up on finding a church but the other week when my brother was here, we were driving around downtown and i saw all these korean people going into a church. sweet!

so today i went to check it out. it was good. i ended up going to both the "adult" service and the "young adult" service. why? well, i've been bad. i've got a lot of repenting to do. ;)

it's a presbyterian church which works well, and is pretty convenient to get to via public transport - quick bus or citycat ride. and there were a fair number of people my age - well over 100. i even met a girl in 3rd year med at UQ.

the only drawback is that everything is in korean. they don't have a separate english service. probably means i won't get as much out of the sermon as i should. but on the flip side, maybe it'll help me pick up some more korean.

i think i'll go again next week.

big aussie in toronto.

so raptors fans are excited about the arrival of jermaine o'neal. so am i. really i am. ford was redundant behind jose calderon. and sure we gave up quite a bit - Roy Hibbert, Rasho and Maceo Baston on top of Ford but i think jermaine and bosh can be a pretty potent 1-2 combo. but that's not what i'm excited about.

i'm excited about this man...

nathan jawai.
he's a 21 year old, 6'10", 285lb centre. now i'm not going to even claim to be any sort of basketball scouting guru but i've heard & seen him before. you see he's an aussie. a kid from new south wales playing on a team in queensland for the aussie 'national basketball league'.
and he's just raw talent. he's a bit of a diamond in the rough - he started playing basketball just 5 years ago. from what i've seen so far he's exactly what the raptors lack. a big body in the middle to bang for rebounds and just be a nuisance - not a push over like that girl andrea. (ok. ok. i'm not bagging bargnani. but let's be honest, he's not exactly a scary guy.)

apparently one of his nicknames is "aussie shaq". let's hope he can live up to that. he might not make the team this year but watch out for him. my guess is that he'll be a regular in 2-3 years tops.

yo. check this out - part 2.

we got these clicker things for lectures this term. it's to encourage student participation & gauge student understanding/knowledge (and discourage napping!) during lectures. i think they're pretty sweet.

so how they work is the lecturer will occasionally put up a multi-choice question and you select your answer via your clicker. through the magic of technology you get an instantaneously bar graph with what all the students in the room answered/guessed - a la 'who wants to be a millionaire'.

i wish i could say that this is an example of the world-class, state-of-the-art education we're receiving but not quite. for crying out loud, even the FIRST year undergrads at UofT started using these LAST year!

weird.

yesterday we got an e-mail from the head of our year telling us that the board would be discussing our exam today and that our exam results would be released by early next week.
this simple little e-mail seem to put me into a bit of stress. subconsciously anyway. this morning i woke up after dreaming that i had just completely bombed the exam. i was glad when i woke up and realized it was just a dream. weird eh? i didn't think too much of it cause the results weren't going to be released until monday at the earliest and i would have at least 3 more sleeps to "undo" that bad dream.

BUT...
after lectures today, to my surprise i found out via a text msg from a friend that the exam results were posted already. i freaked just a little thinking that the dream i had might be real.

the overall pass mark was 58.
the average was 69.
with a standard deviation of 7.
me? just at right about average.
i think i'm content with the mark. not ecstatic cause OBVIOUSLY i can definitely do better. but feeling also slightly relieved because the more i thought about the exam, the more i felt uneasy about it.
but i can be better than average. i know i'm better than average...

*****
ps. i'm leaning toward writing my USMLEs this winter.

pps. kudos to the school of medicine for getting our marks out so quickly.

yo check this out!

got a package in the mail yesterday.
it was from my friend hannah. she sent me an english-korean & korean-english medical dictionary.

sweet.
this means i gotta brush up on some korean.

thanks hannah!
for all you other people, don't be afraid to follow in hannah's footsteps. feel free to show random acts of kindness with packages in the mail. wired cash works too. ;)

green tea latte, glenelg, boxer shorts, brighton, clara's bday.

slept in on sunday morning and then headed out for breakfast by the beach. had a "lighter" breakfast and then went into to a starbucks to warm up and to sit & chat. we sat on the balcony that overlooked the ocean and the main square of glenelg. it was quite nice.

note to self. never get the green tea latte.

we then walked around glenelg...

look! it's a palindrome!
G-L-E-N-E-L-G... G-L-E-N-E-L-G.

while in search of a toilet, we stumbled across the town museum.

i'm not sure who this is but my guess is he found glenelg and pointed to everyone: "look! it's glenelg!" ok, so maybe that not EXACTLY how it went...

we then walked along the jetty and took some pictures.

...

...

yea. about that. justin had sent me boxer shorts that look like a canadian hockey jersey. to the horror of clara and stella, i showed my appreciation by wearing it around in public. can't possibly imagine what they'd be so embarrassed about.

we had had enough of glenelg so we headed to brighton.

another little beach. another jetty. and another meal. lunch was at primo's, an italian/seafood restaurant. it was good. i had the seafood risotto and felt like i was going to burst at the seams.

i'm pretty sure pat's full too.

after lunch, the girls' did the some shopping and pat & i snuck off to buy a cake for clara's birthday. on our way home we went up to windy point for a view of the city...

at least one silly jumping photo is mandatory on all trips.

funny thing.

in classic bogen fashion, there were several of these drive-thru liquor stores in adelaide.

of course there was one last meal left. dinner was at a restaurant/pub called the dublin. another great meal. i had a seared kingfish.
(sorry camera was out of batteries by this point).
it was some great tasting fish. we rarely have fish in brissy - beef is king at "home". so it was nice.

we capped off the trip with a song and some cake.

happy (early) birthday clara!

another early flight out and i was home in bris by noon on monday. cleaned up, showered and headed to lectures. i'm glad i didn't blow them off cause they were actually pretty good.

*****
when i first flew into adelaide i wasn't expecting a whole lot out of the city - especially considering stella refers to adelaide as a "cultural wasteland" and the in-flight magazine referred to it as "dullsville". but i gotta say i had a lot of fun. and i can definitely see why it'd be a tourist-worthy place in the summer time.
but maybe our next reunion will be somewhere else? melbourne? or even new zealand perhaps?

i think this picture sums up this trip.

noice!!!

marilyn, CBD, UofA, bratwursts, wine tasting.

saturday started off with a big breakfast at a place called "a cafe etc..."
food was pretty good - and they had marilyn monroe EVERYWHERE. it was like a shrine. the walls of the restaurant were completely plastered with pictures, posters and news articles about marilyn. they had plates with pictures of MM hanging from the walls, porcelain dolls of MM, even a elvis-like bust of MM. it was cool. sort of. all that really matters was that it was only 10:30 and i was completely stuffed.


we then drove into the city and walked around the downtown core. it wasn't very big. hm... the entire downtown seemed about the size of the UofT st.george campus.
we took some pictures by the state library, the art gallery and museum and eventually wandered onto the university of adelaide campus. now, the UofA campus was actually quite nice.


it was very harvard-esque. it even had a little river in the back - like harvard!


it reminded me so much of boston that i got a little carried away. i don't think this boot is as lucky though.


all that walking was making us hungry. we weren't really hungry but felt obliged to eat. afterall, it was past noon. so we drove up to hahndorf a little town with good german food. we stopped in a little place for some tea and coffee and then settled on a german restaurant. i proceeded to stuff my face with a bratwurst with lots of sauerkraut.

it was good.

after lunch we went for some wine tasting.

stella opted not to drink as she was driving so i dutifully had her share of wine.


clara - happy with the view.


me - happy with my purchase.

after the wine we went up to mount lofty but it was much too foggy and cloudy to see anything.


after mount lofty we were pooped. so we headed home. we recharged our batteries and then decided it was time for dinner. yes we were still full but the clock said it was 6:30. time for dinner. we ended up picking up some take out from a thai place nearby. pat made a very valiant effort to finish all 4 servings (the rest of us weren't very hungry) but was unsuccessful. i think there is enough leftovers from that dinner to last stella for another couple of weeks.

adelaide wrap up.

man. where to start. i can't believe my break is over already and pat is somewhere over the pacific ocean on his way back home. it's true. time flies when you're having fun.

so we flew into adelaide on friday morning, caught a cab and made our way to stella's townhouse. after dropping off our bags and catching our breaths, we started getting hungry so we decided to go exploring around the campus. no offense stella but flinders has got nothing on UQ. it reminds me of the UTSC campus back in the day. lots of green grass and trees but also lots and LOTS of CONCRETE.

pat with the bust of captain matthew flinders.

fortunately stella finished earlier than expected so we headed out for some fluids (at cibo) and dinner (at simply sushi). after dinner we drove into the city and did a quick tour by car. we then headed to the airport to pick up clara who was flying in from sydney. for some reason stella thought it'd be funny to embarrass clara by wearing party hats as we waited for her at her gate.

in case you don't know clara, she gets embarrassed very easily and is generally ashamed of all her male cousins. well, except for pat. and in this case, without justin and harri, i guess that just leaves, well... me.

case in point:

adelaide is home to coopers beer. it's probably one of the better beers of australia but still doesn't compare to canadian beer. the funny thing is that coopers is a family brewery and one of the CEOs - Tim Cooper is actually an MD, well, i guess an MBBS.

after picking up clara, we picked up some pizza (yes, more food) and went home to watch some scrubs and fraser DVDs.

blast from the past...???

what?
just read on tsn that cito gaston is back as the manager of the toronto blue jays.
huh? really? when did this happen???

well, they're long shots at 10.5 games back of the red sox in the A.L. East but heck, they've still got 1/2 a season to play right? i'm not holding my breath though.

take that america!

we're number one!
we're number one!
we're number one!

australia is now the fattest country in the world. pft... and the yankees thought they were number one at everything.

*****
just got home from the airport. had a GREAT weekend in adelaide. will tell you all about it later with pictures and all. let's just say there was a lot of giggling and TRUCK loads of food. if we were to keep that up, we'd definitely be contributing to the aussie obesity epidemic.

adelaide here we come!

it's friday morning. early. so early dawn hasn't even cracked yet. headed to the airport for our 7am flight to adelaide. should be good. weather in adelaide looks brisk but sunny. probably won't update until i get back. catch y'all next week.

it's hollywood baby.

came across this pretty cool vid the other day.

it looks pretty legit but it's pretty tough to believe. i don't doubt that kobe could hang in the air long enough for an aston martin to speed under him. but to have the cojones to stand in front of a speeding car & to time his jump perfectly... that's a different story.

he's admitted in a recent game time interview that the commercial was "hollywood". but kudos to you mr. bryant for making us actually believe it might've been possible.

as for game 6 of the nba finals, let's go lakers. as much as i love the city of boston, and as much respect as i have for KG, ray "silky smooth" allen and paul pierce, i can't stand another major sporting trophy going to boston. thank goodness the bruins suck.

whirlwind few days.

exam on thursday went... well, it went. the general consensus is that it was a WTF exam. ethics was the only section where the questions lined up with what we were actually taught. the multiple choice question in particular were just brutal. hopefully i didn't bomb it too badly. and if i did, i'm pretty confident that i won't be the only one. >.< safety in numbers baby. safety in numbers.

otherwise, been busy chillaxing and hanging out with pat.
went out to see indiana jones on thursday night. what a horrible movie. i think george lucas forgot that it was supposed to be a indy movie and not a star wars movie. and don't even get me started on cate blanchett. she was arguably the worst part of this BAD movie.

friday we went out to lone pine, hugged some koalas & then went up to mount cootha for a view of the city.

pat and me with bris in the background.

late night study sessions...

you start to go a little insane after studying all day everyday for 10+ days.

on most days, while the girls went out to the library/campus, matt and i stayed home. on some days we'd only venture outside to take out the garbage, pick up the mail or cook dinner on the bbq in the backyard. don't worry though we still showered and moved around. we don't smell and we don't have pressure ulcers on our butts. yes!

i think we've kept each other sane though, quizzing each other and clarifying things we don't understand.

wait, now that i think about it, maybe we aren't so sane. maybe we've both lost it and just never really realized cause we've had no other social contact. now that i look back there are some moments where i question our sanity. like... late night 8 minute tae bo sessions with billy blanks on youtube, howling with the crazy dog next door, painting our toe-nails with laura's nail polish, late night ice cream & potato chip sessions and perhaps the most worrisome - giggling like immature little school girls at things like priapism - which (according to matt, i take no credit for this whatsoever) is actually a clinical feature of chronic myelogenous leukemia.

ok. don't judge us. ;D hahaha!

can you guess which toes are mine? i guess the hairy legs kind of give you a hint. the other feet belong to matt and laura.


i'll be glad when this is over. it's been fun learning stuff, but the stress i can really do without!!!

some things i'm looking forward to:
-some fresh air & throwing a football around
-indiana jones. still haven't seen it!
-poker. i'm in the mood for some poker
-most importantly... chilling with my brother.

hit a wall.

got some good study in this week. right up until about friday. between sunday and thursday i was at about 43 hours and on pace for 60+ hours.
then friday hit. i woke up late and i just hit a wall. i managed to get a couple of hours of study in but otherwise spent the day cooling my brain. did some laundry, went out for dinner & ice cream for matt's birthday and hit the sack early.
got back on the horse today though. still got 4 good study days left until the exam. sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday. 4.

*****
hm... pat should be in the air somewhere over southern ontario by now.

*****
found this in the toronto star this morning. it's an article about plans to make it easier for foreign trained doctors to practice in ontario. sweet. but i'll believe it when it happens. it's quite amazing though... 850,000 people in ontario alone don't have a family doctor. the province is short 2,500 doctors and another 2,600 are over the age of 65+ (& hopefully retiring soon!).

speaking of doctors in ontario... a friend recently told me about some lousy GPs that she has had. and then by coinky-dink, one of my roommates brought up this site where you can rate your doctors. it's called ratemds.com. check it out. i looked for my doctor and dentist but neither of them were there. but i did find some of the doctors that i worked with during my first year elective and they were rated quite well. that's always good to know.

week's total: 52 hours.
alright i'm tired. i'm going to bed. good night.

study party!

classes are done for the semester.
i've now got a week to stuff as much info into my cranium and then the exam is on the thursday after that. plenty of time. (that's what i keep telling myself.) 11 days and a few hours.

kicked the study up another notch this week.
managed to log 41 hours.

the roommates and i have stocked up on the junk food and moved out into the living room for nightly "study parties". that's right. our two favorite things put together... studying and partying.
in the words of matt: it's the most fun you can have with your pants on!

can you tell i'm stoked?

i expect next week to be a monstrous study week especially considering i don't have any lectures or school commitments.
goal of 55 hours.
current gear: in 6th and wondering if my porsche turbo comes with overdrive.

!!!