what a goof!

i had quite the morning.
it started off great. i slept in til about 8... managed that perfect balance of feeling refreshed and energized without feeling guilty for sleeping-in.
read a couple of chapters, had a big breakfast, showered and was headed to school.
i put my shoes on, stepped outside and closed the door. as soon as i heard my doorknob click, it hit me. i had left my keys on my desk. ahhh!!!
i locked myself out of my own room! shoot.

the good thing was that class wasn't scheduled to start for another hour and a half. bad news was that i had to bus it down to my real estate agent, pick up an extra set of keys, let myself in and then return the keys later. errr!!!

when we were kids my dad used to tell us: (translated from korean) - if you have a bad brain, your arms and legs suffer.
so true. so true.

R.E.M. sleep

I’ve always been a morning person. But since I moved down under I’ve REALLY become a morning person. I’m usually in bed and asleep by about 10:30. On weekdays I’m up at 6:30 and weekends by about 7:30. The funny thing about my weekends is that I always get up at about 5:30 to use the washroom and have a drink of water. I sleep until my alarm goes off at 6:30, turn it off and go back to bed for another hour or so. During this last hour of sleep, I have some of the most vivid dreams ever. Here’s a little sampling of my dreams from the past week or so.

1. I am an accomplice to a bank robbery. I’m the guy that sits in the car with the engine running. The kicker is that our get-away car is a Porsche 911 carrera. Convertible. I wait. I wait for my partner to stroll out of the bank with a pillowcase full of money. She hops in and we speed off. But there is no hurry. There is no panic. I slide seamlessly through the gears and before you can even hear the police sirens, we’re off into the sunset. The steering wheel is on the left-hand side. So I guess I must be robbing the banks back home. ;-)

2. this time, I’m on the other side of the law. I’m some FBI or CIA agent that’s running after a bad guy. I fire my weapon in public as if it’s no big deal. We run up and down subway tunnels, run through busy intersections and up and over fences as if the whole world is just an obstacle course. I finally chase him down and corner him. But just at the most critical moment, *CLICK* I run out of bullets. :-(

3. I’m sitting at home studying with my door open. A woman comes by with two children in tow. She asks me to write a doctor’s note for her two teenage daughters that have each missed a test because they were away on a family vacation. I try to be as polite as possible. But this woman just doesn’t seem to get it. I try to explain to her that a) it would be highly unethical for me to write her daughters a note for a sickness that they never had and b) I’m a lowly first-year medical student and my signature means squat! :-p

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what these dreams mean?

ECGs...

this weeks we've been playing with some ECGs.
this is mine from the other day.

i've labelled the different parts of the wave.
my heart rate was actually down in the 40s during my first run through and then someone brought it to my attention and then it jumped up to 52. boo.
at last check, lance armstrong is rumoured to have a resting heart rate of 32-34 beats per minute!

sudden loss...

today i lost a friend that was near and dear to my heart.
the lost came so suddenly. for a few seconds i stood there not knowing what to do.

*sniff sniff*
thanks for the memories.
may you rest in peace.

ok seriously... damn! my headband broke! i just went to put it on and it snapped!
i know some of you disliked it from the start but i loved that headband! now what am i going to do? err!!!
i'll take this as a sign that i should get my hair cut. i will THINK about getting it cut this weekend or the next.

aussie english lesson #5

Wagging – skipping class. Don’t you have lectures today? Yea, but I’m wagging.

Sticks – rural area, boonies. “Where do you live?” “Oh, I live out in the sticks. About 6 hours away from any major city.”

Cracker – really good, great. So the other day I get an e-mail from my surf instructor and the first line read “Cracker link on your blog!” and I’m thinking “huh?? What does that mean and how did he find my blog?” turns out he’s got a tracker on his website. After the post from a few Fridays ago, I guess a lot of you had checked out the website. He was curious to see where all his new traffic was coming from and that led him back to my blog. So there’s another word courtesy of Jamo. CRACKER!

Cheers – I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this one already. It’s probably the first word I noticed. It’s synonymous with “thanks”. But it’s often used on parting or ending a conversation. Every aussie signs off their e-mails with a “cheers” at the end.

Queue – back home we don’t use this word much. And when we do, we usually use it as a noun. “there was a long queue in front of the bank machine”. But here, it serves more in its verb form. “I was in a hurry but people had queued up past the entrance and around the building”. “hey, what’s everyone queuing up for?”

Overcooked – I am NOT making this one up. It came up in our PBL group meeting the other day. So I’m told that in oz, the word “overcooked” is used to describe a baby that is delivered post-term or a baby that is overdue. Where did they come up with this? Well, apparently a baby that’s delivered after 40 weeks, “looks overcooked”. I’m told that their skin is RED and dry... like an overcooked turkey or something. How’s THAT for some imagery?

I just have to remind myself that aussie english isn’t ‘weird’. Just different. Cases in point:
• Toilet – not bathroom, restroom, washroom, powder room or any other room. Just toilet.
• Eskie - ice box, cooler
• Trolley – shopping cart
• Heaps – lots, tons
• Car park – parking lot
• Footpath – side walk
• Scull – gulp down, chug down