This is just great

Isnt' it great when your patients can finally be discharged from hospital?

Especially when your cases have to be clerked till they are discharged.

I was so glad just now that two of my patients can be discharged.

But at the final moment, they were forced to remain at the hospital for further observation.

One minute I was so elated and the next it's like someone threw a huge bucket of iced water in my face. Ouch. 

Yet another whiny post

It has been so long since I last blogged that I almost forgot how to create a new post.
It was such a busy semester with all the research stuff going on and the pain is agonising. Thank God research is finally over. How did I live through those days of inadequate sleep and doing lab work from 9 in the morning till 9 at night and the one month break that was meant to be a break for me ended up as a non-break because I had to deal with the whole research dissertation and some other things...but anyway all of that is in the past now.

Now I am in my final semester and I have to go for hospital placement in December. When everyone else is going for holidays and haveing their vacations. And I am stuck in a hospital clerking cases. Of course I am not the only one, everyone in B105 has to go through the same thing. Guess I can't complain as much then. But still...

Anyway, I'm still counting down the days till you come back PaoEe. Faster come back...........

Friend?

True friends are hard to come by these days. A friend is defined as a person, who is usually not a member of your family, whom you know well and whom you like a lot. Like it or not, friends influence us in many ways, and some "friends" will try to change you into something you are not and most of the times the new you is not a person you can like or be proud of.

I do not like it when "friends" spread hurtful words and rumours about other friends no matter how true they are. And the worst of these type of "friends" are those that can do this with malicious intent and glee. Utterly disrespectful. It is almost like an addiction to them. They do this because they feel that they are alone and they do not want you to have other friends other than him/herself. These "friends" talk bad about other people to you so that you cannot face them without feeling ashamed or being fake as now you know something that you should not know about them, and eventually you will drift away from other people and you can only turn to these supposed "friends".

Light gossipping is one thing but "friends" who spread venomous gossip about others is an entirely different story altogether and beware of these "friends" as they can declare that they are your "friend" in this moment and backstab you in the next second when you are not looking.

Another type of "friend" that I despise are those that put you or other people down in the face just to make him/herself feel better about themselves. These "friends" are those who know that they are lacking in many ways but they choose to put someone else down or hurt the feelings of others just to prove to themselves that somehow they are superior beings to others instead of working on their weaknesses or trying to look at themselves in a positive light. Hopeless.

Also, there are "friends" who take other people for granted when they themselves do not want others to take them for granted. What hypocrites.

The traits of these "friends" is too long to list in one post. Human nature can be so ugly sometimes.

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Last Friday I was doing FTIR in the lab and it was a day that was a bit on the disastrous side, but the disasters did not come from me hehe. It was Nithiya who started the disaster with the vacuum dessicator (do not pry for more information or he will whine to me or go on his famous rampage =p) and I told Wai Leong about it. This was what happened after that...

Wai Leong was cleaning the mortar with ethanol and he was saying "Haih..Nithiya is becoming a disaster..." and at the same time he was placing the bottle containing ethanol on the table i saw a drip fell onto the table and I was thinking "It couldn't have fallen into the weighing boat containing the KBr right?" but when I went over and checked the weighing boat, part of the KBr in it was already soaked in ethanol and cannot be used anymore, so Nithiya had to re-weigh the KBr again. Just imagine the situation I was in. I couldn't stop laughing cause Mr. Disaster calling another person disaster is like the pot calling the kettle black.

After that there was this time when Wai Leong squirted some of the ethanol on the KBr disc and the papers underneath the disc were handwritten notes using gel ink. And the ink spread beautifully across the paper. Luckily those were not my papers, if not all hell will break loose.

And some time after that, Wai Leong was picking up the weighing boat from the table and he somehow lost his grip on the weighing boat and some of the KBr spilt from the weighing boat. I was laughing so hard till my sides hurt cause I remembered Wai Leong's earlier comment while he went out to tell Nithiya he had to re-weigh the KBr again. This is such a joke. I will never get bored working with these people I tell you. No hard feelings Wai Leong and Nithiya. =)

Ramblings

It was such a huge relief after I was done with my research proposal presentation last Friday. Luckily the presentation went well, I was all nerves the whole time before the presentation but when the time came and I was sitting in MPH 4, I was so calm it felt weird. There's no use to freak out when something is inevitable right? But I was happy with the results in the end. =)

I'm still not used to this whole research thing. I have not officially started yet so I am not as busy as the others and I'm not used to having free time. It almost feels like I'm wasting my time not doing or achieving anything like in previous semesters where there was no time for anything else. Guess IMU has trained us well in using every second of our waking moment working towards something. But things seem to be a bit too calm now...almost like the calm before a big storm...a bit creepy...anyway I think things will start to get busy soon...

Speaking of which, I joined the "B105 gathering/dinner" on Monday at the Overseas restaurant at Sri Petaling on Monday night. The food was terrible in the sense that it did not taste as good as those at the other Overseas branches and it was so not worth my money which is a lot for this kind of meal and the atmosphere was so-so. Plus, I was so not in the mood that day. I don't know why. Not going to comment anymore. What's done is done so I'm just going to get over it and move on.

Feelings in Speech?

Last week I had a mock presentation with my supervisor and I received a comment that I presented unfeelingly. He said that my pronounciation was fine but that I did not speak confidently or persuasive enough. This is not the first time that anyone commented that I speak unfeelingly.

The other time was when I was asking this simulated patient some questions about his health and this lecturer told me "You do not seem concerned for the patient. I feel that it is in the way that you are speaking to him." Sigh. I did feel concerned for the mock patient but I just did not project it in my speech. It is not necessary to project your every emotion into your speech right?

It is not that I do not want to but I know that I do have a problem in expressing all my feelings through my speech other than anger or sarcasm (yes I know this and some others do too) but nevertheless I am somehow always misunderstood as a cold, unfeeling person. Sigh. I have to work this thing out somehow and try to inject more feelings into my speech in the future. And I am also trying very hard to not fall sick until my proposal presentation is over. Keeping my fingers crossed for my presentation!

I Love Spain!

Yessss!!!! Spain won the EURO 2008!! They so deserved to win it!! The goal by Torres was fab and Casillas was great! If only Villa could have played...Actually most players on this team were in great in most of the games and their games were nicely played out. Spain could have scored another goal (especially the one attempt that I can remember by Senna) and many more which were so close but Germany just got lucky.

I do watch football whenever I can and I am no expert at the game but I watch for the fun of it. Especially World Cup and EURO. They are a must-watch. And this year's game was really, really good! Except for the departure of Portugal and Netherlands at the quarter-finals due to Germany and Russia respectively, which almost made me not want to watch the game anymore. Such a waste...Too bad Italy couldn't make it to the semi-finals but I would be happy anyway if either Italy or Spain made it to the semis. Thankfully, Spain thrashed Russia in the semi-finals (again! haha I don't care, I support whichever team that beat Russia, sorry Russian fans) and Germany in the finals (same thing). I love Spain now!

Only people who watched the game throughout can understand what I'm talking about here so I can understand if anyone gets confused with my notoriously terrible and extremely brief comment of the game haha. After all the excitement for 3 weeks (and 3 weeks of sleeping almost at 5am together with complimentary panda eyes), it is back to research, research, and more research (and more panda eyes plus sleepless nights plus stress). *sigh*

First Aid

On the 21st of June 2008, I finally went for the Introduction to First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation course with Andrew the Palli and believe me it was horrible in the sense that I had to go through almost 8 hours of lame jokes and comments that at some point in the middle of the course I decided that I will no longer entertain the lame comments that the instructor were feeding the participants. But horrible as it may be I finally did my electives and am now certified as a first aide! Well..kind of even though what I learnt is just the basic of the basics but that is sufficient enough. Let me just give you a few highlights of what I had to go through (there were too many comments oozing with lame-ness that I lost count halfway through). By the way, the conversations were originally in Bahasa Malaysia.

Situation 1
Instructor: Why can't you use clean cloths to cover wounds?
Me: (Thinking what is wrong with using clean cloths to cover the wounds as it is better compared to using dish rags or other soiled cloths that may cause infection to the wounds)
Instructor: Because you can't find clean cloths anywhere and at anytime. Can you find clean cloths lying by the roadside? Hahaha.
Everyone: Hahaha.
Me: (Thinking okayyyy.....)

Situation 2
Instructor: Why can't you put an unconscious victim on a table? (the CPR dummy was on the table anyway)
Someone: Because it is harder to perform CPR on a victim that is lying on a table? (now doesn't this sound sensible?)
Instructor: No. Because you can't find a table on the roadside or in the jungle, can you? Hahaha.
Everyone: Hahaha.
Me: (Thinking okayyy again. Like, when is this going to end?)

Situation 3 (and this is the final blow for me as I was bombarded by one too many lame comments by this time and I absolutely refuse to be affected by any more of them)
Instructor: What do you do when a patient is conscious and has pulse and breath?
Someone: Recovery position.
Instructor: What do you do when there is no pulse and no breath?
Someone: CPR.
Instructor: What do you do when there is a pulse but no breath?
Someone: MTM (mouth-to-mouth).
Instructor: Then what do you do when there is no pulse but there is breath?
Me: (Thinking something is weird about this situation...I mean a person with no pulse but is still breathing?? There can be no more steps right??)
Instructor: It's CL.
Everyone: (Thinking what the hell is CL???)
Instructor: Cabut Lari la!
Me: (In my mind I am banging my head on the wall and wanting very much to kill this guy standing in front of the class)

Seriously I think this may be the same guy that answered the phone call as posted in my previous post. But anyway I have my certificate already! Thank God I made it through that horrendous class alive. Palli susahla...

Birthday Celebration

Date: June 10th 2008

Venue: Italiannies, The Gardens MidValley

Birthday girl: Huixin

Organizers & friends: Gianwan, Eeling, Elaine, Siwei, Me

We went out to celebrate Huixin's birthday (belatedly as her birthday falls on the June 5th) and it was supposed to be a "surprise" birthday celebration for her but apparently the birthday girl was not all that surprised because somehow she kind of figured it out haha. It was a small affair, nothing too fancy and we decided on the venue on that day itself and when we went there it was as if we reserved the entire place because it was empty except for us and it was at lunchtime!

I was starving when I finally sat down and when I looked at the menu...forget about deciding what to eat I'm too hungry to think and everything looked so good, I did not care what was being ordered. This is why I do not remember any of the names of the food in the following pics but they were good especially the starter that Eeling ordered.

The flings. From left to right: Yellow Birdie (Huixin, that was how she got her nickname Birdie hehe), Bay Breeze (mine), Island Breeze (Gianwan) and Frozen Ocean (Elaine). We did not know what drinks we ordered because we couldn't hear what the waiter was saying so we decided to be a little adventurous and just picked whatever sounds nice and hoped that it turns out ok.

I was taking tentative sips of the drink cause I did not know what was it but it turned out ok. Huixin said it tasted like water that is used to wash hands when eating crabs. Okayyyy..but I was happy with my drink which is some sort of lime mixture and it is handy when you have to down lots of cheese later.

The starter that Eeling ordered. It was very, very good. Recommended if anyone goes to Italiannies. Forgot what it was called but there's a pic of it in the menu so it's easy to order haha.

The main courses. The only one I remembered was the Classic Pizza because who can forget such a simple name? But the pizza was so-so only, I prefer the ones at PastaMania. The pasta was overdone and tasted a bit soggy and by the time I got to the lasagna I could not down anymore cheese, it was so cheesy and although I like cheese but too much of it will make me not eat cheese for some time.

These are the other pics that we took during and after our meal...

There were more pics than these but I'm too lazy to upload all of them. After this we cannot go back there for some time because we were jumping here and there and taking pics everywhere haha. After our heavy lunch and taking lots of pics, we went walking around The Gardens and then Huixin and I went to KLCC to get the shoes that she wanted since last year I think...Not bad yea we can go to two different places in a day. Up next, our (Huixin and I) "date" with McDreamy at the movies hehehe...

Procrastinating

Procrastinating is bad...so very bad...but I do it anyway :)
Was supposed to sleep at this time so that I can wake up early and go for my first aid classes at the Red Crescent Society (for electives) tomorrow but in the end Andrew the Palli and I decided to go for the next class which is in 2 weeks time. We decided at the last minute or more precisely around 11-11.30pm that we are going to go for the intro class which is cheaper anyway. The end result: postponed my electives for another 2 weeks.

Procrastinating is bad la and Andrew the Palli just asked me today about what we are going to do tomorrow (the day before the classes were supposed to start) and I did not even plan anything until it was really too late as I was preoccupied for the past few weeks and both of us were panicking and making decisions at the last minute.
Seriously...we are a bunch of "lepak" people as he puts it and we can still laugh at it...hopeless la...

And speaking of the classes, this guy who answered the phone when I first called the main office long ago really made me speechless for awhile and when you see this you will understand why.

Me: What is the difference between the basic first aid course and the intro to first aid and CPR course?
Guy: The basic first aid course teaches the basics and the intro is just the intro.
Me: .......

Seriously.

High

Yes I was high on 7th April 2008 cause I was reading sources on Multiple Sclerosis for the past few days and I managed to complete the whole 3000+ (4000+ if u count the words in the tables) essay in 1 n half day (more like half day of a Saturday and whole night of a Sunday).

And this is not where it ends..we still had to prepare for a PSD on Monday and I had to compile the slides for the e-PBL as I was the leader and I still have not started my Toxico presentation yet as of Monday which is the day that we have to hand in the presentation to AAD.So I had to stay up the whole night to finish my CTT and I managed to do it after a strong cup of coffee (which I did know but chose to ignore in the name of CTT that will make me suffer so much later in the evening..think headache and dehydration and feeling like crap).

I only started preparing for Monday's PSD on Monday morning itself. Luckily our patient was late so we did not need to do counselling for antidiabetics which was a good thing cause I just made marks in the BNF to refer to..And luckily I read up a bit on how to use the MDI and Turbohaler (but this Turbohaler is funny..it can twist both sides so I was a bit unsure of the counselling) and the patient I tell you...such a pain in the a**.

He kept asking what if he missed a dose and what if he cannot take it on time cause he's so busy..and I can fairly conclude that half of the time he does not listen to me, seriously..Then when I actually asked him what his problem was that caused him difficulties in taking his doses, he just evaded my questions..twice in a row and he just waved it off..obviously he did not see this coming from me (I was happy that I threw him off guard for once haha). And then when he asked if he takes his dose like in the morning then can he take in the afternoon I answered better if there was a longer period but there is no time limit to when you take the corticosteroid doses..I don't know what I was talking about at this time and he kept repeating the question but it did not go into my no-sleep-the-whole-of-previous-night-plus-still-high-on-caffeine-brain and I was getting irritated so I just stared at him until he finished explaining his question and I went "Sorry?Huh?What?" kind of loudly..and I looked up at the lecturer-in-charge (or outside pharmacist) and my session ended..phew..haha

I was fortunate I got the inhaler one cause I was totally unprepared for the other meds. I'm kind of happy for myself that I can actually counsel better on the use of MDI and corticosteroid inhaler use (Turbohaler) than I did last time on this inhaler thing.

And there was another funny part where Amanda counseled on the alendronate use,sorry I had to say this here ;) This is just a brief summary which may not be precise.

Amanda: After you take this medication, you have to stand or walk around for at least 30 mins.
Patient: What??Stand for 30 mins??
A: Yes, so that you will not get heartburn.
Lecturer-in-charge: You can actually sit for at least 30 mins after taking the med.
P: Can sit one ar?!Then why you ask me to stand for 30 mins when I can just sit and read my paper?!Why I want to walk around/stand for 30 mins like soh chai only!

Hahaha the way he said it was really ridiculous. But in the end you get the 1 mark by just showing up for this thing. I was like "What la..". Then I had to rush for the Toxico slides after that and this time I have to thank VengFoon for doing part of my slides even though he haven't finished his CTT yet at that time. Finally I finished everything by Monday and was free for the rest of the week except for the other 2 presentations. Who said Sem 6 have free time?? Whack that person I tell you..

"Chill" Day

Yesss!Finally after 1 whole month of suffering like crazy i finally get 1 "chill" day!!
I love "chill" days cause I get to be an aimless person for a day n I get to do anything I want without bothering about assignments n portfolios n PBLs n toxico projects n CTT assignments etc. etc. etc. (especially hospital logbooks cos it was a nightmare for me..seriously whoever was under a certain lecturer whom I think the whole class already knows by now went through a hell of a time trying to redo all care plans concerned to meet her exceptionally perfect standards).
Ok enough about the torture,this is supposed to be about my chill day so here goes hehe..

This morning was great!I woke up and the first thing I did was not go straight to the comp to finish my work like I did for the past few days, had a good sleep but still it was not enough cause I drank a whole cup of iced coffee at Kim Gary when I had dinner with HuiXin the day before (drinking coffee for dinner is a really bad idea) and ended up sleeping at 5 a.m. and woke up at 10 a.m. this morning. Anyway even if I can't wake up the stupid construction that has been going on behind my house for the past 3 months will wake me up at 10 a.m. sharp with the drilling and other sorts of construction noises that will definitely jar you from your beauty sleep and for God's sake it's a Saturday ok??Like this also they don't let me sleep.....back to the main topic...

Went out with Dut today to KLCC and yes that's the closest place I can go to chill cause the other shopping complexes require a lot of hassle just to get there..and by the time you get there you will be too exhausted to chill properly anymore haha

So Dut and I went to the Coffee Club Express located on the 4th floor in Kinokuniya for lunch and yes it's a good place to really chill and relax cause the atmosphere there is not as hectic as in other cafes.The food is not bad,delicious even!I think I was too tired then I did not eat much today..now it's time for piccies!!(decided to camwhore today as I have not had the opportunity to camwhore in such a really really long time..)

This is Dut with her favourite Caesar Salad and her favourite cappuccino (mine too!)..

Me with both of our lunches (don't know why I have cravings for chicken pies nowadays..still trying to find the best chicken pie..)

My candid pic *smiles*

I love this pic!Traders Hotel is somewhere outside the window behind me (Andrew said that I was promoting their coffee!haha yeps kinda!but it tastes good!)

Me finally digging into my food..

While Dut has already dug into her food long ago...

And while she was distracted with the camera I was caught on camera stealing her croutons and smoked turkey! I love croutons and smoked turkey! (But you can't really see it from this angle hehe and yes I finally remembered what those bread thingies in our Dome's creamy soup are called HuiXin!They are croutons!)

Yay!I finally got the whole Caesar salad from Dut!You know...I never eat salads and I hate garlic smells but the Caesar salad here is not bad and the veggies are not the dead of dead kinds that you can't even put into your mouth..and yes you get to choose to add smoked turkey in it here instead of plain chicken.

And Dut has to finish my food hehe..

After we finished our lunch and chatted awhile there and I told her about the new bunch of lecturers that the uni has now and especially those that love to laugh at the mistakes students did or I think they perceive it more as crimes that have been committed against the secret code of the International Society of Pharmacist Geniuses You Mere Pharmacist Students Are So Out of Our Leagues or have a stroke just cause we don't have the whole drug database in our brains..maybe they are a group of cyborgs that have artificial intelligence installed in them and they have the whole damn drug database in their brains or what so they think they can laugh at their students..A lecturer is supposed to guide their students,not make fun of them or ridicule them over small matters..and yes I get it that you are smarter than the whole bunch of us cause you have already studied further than us and have more experience than us but these kind of lecturers..I totally have no respect for them as lecturers or as individuals cause they really don't deserve it.I am only speaking about a selected few new lecturers,not as a whole as there are some of them who are really there to help their students and not just there to flaunt their worldly knowledge and act superficially.Argh this is supposed to be about my "chill" day!Can't help it,I will rant a lot whenever this topic is brought up..

After our lunch and chat session,Dut and I headed to the TGV cinema to get a pic with Wall-E (I know he is just made of cardboard but he's so cute in a weird sort of way..what am I talking about la..)

Dut, me and Wall-E.

As it was still early and we had nothing to do,we went to the KLCC park to have a stroll and maybe get some pics (This is why I love "chill" days..I don't need to rush for anything in particular or rush to shop here and there)

Dut with little island in the middle of the large fountain, too bad the fountains were turned off at the time.

This pic was taken by a tourist from Cambodia.Don't know why he took full length...cannot complain la haha.He and his wife and mom were there for a holiday and Malaysia was their last stop on their holiday trip and they were nice people i guess.Then the guy wanted his wife to take pics wit the 2 of us and the wife was hugging my waist quite tightly I think don't know about Dut's side..haha it was quite funny too bad we couldn't get the pic hopefully they had a wonderful time here in Malaysia.It was quite nice to pretend to be tourists and act all touristy..should do that again next time haha

Then we continued our "chill" day at San Francisco Coffeehouse.I love their Iced Chocolate!But I think the guy misunderstood what I said bout crushed ice and ice blended (I wanted crushed ice but got ice blended instead) and it was horribly sweet that one can actually feel diabetic when one drinks it..and the camwhoring continues..

And finally pics of me and Dut at diff places though you can't really see it cause we had to take the pics ourselves and it takes skill!!

Basically all of them have same poses la haha (finally had a pic of Dut in her make-up cause she was going to attend a wedding dinner,hopefully it did not bore you to death Dut!haha)

All this camwhoring in one day and with Dut is amazing..this is the first time I have this many pics with you!Other than the ones from our bdays hehe

That is all for now!Was a really great outing and hopefully I will get to do this next time!Yes I still have a camwhoring session with HuiXin which after I don't know how many months is still unaccomplished.Never mind we will definitely do it if I'm not that tired or haggard-looking that is..

Cheers~

Birth of New Blog

Yay!I finally decided to start a new blog here but i still do not know how to use it..
I need help from u wy!haha
I finally had a bit of time to do some things that I have been putting off for quite some time now and this is one of it (didn't want to use the friendster one anymore cause it was too public ;) and I don't feel safe talking about some stuff there,you know what I mean right?)
Hopefully I can keep this blog going and not let it die like the previous one!
And yes there's still more to come here and I haven't even started ranting on the past few week's worth of torture!
Look out for the next post if you are interested!
Cheers~