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.

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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. ;)

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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.

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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.

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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.