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.