441# Kirurgi - Av friskt blod og fungating kreft

One week has officially passed for Surgery posting.

Me and other four of my colleagues got posted to the female surgical ward at the top floor of the hospital. Waiting for the lift every morning isn't the best thing to start the day.

In this ward, it's active everyday, the patient's turnover rate is high, and we have eight beds to cover person. Therefore covering the ward is quite a hard task to do.

On top of it, we don't have our university's lecturers to come as to give us extra teaching unlike in the male wards. I'm not happy about this but somehow there will still be some of us to be in this ward and I'm just being the one of them.

And it's so obvious the grouping is "arranged" so perfectly.



Apart from the busy daily 7.30am - 10.00pm ward work to do, there are plenty of stuffs to study. Last week I selectively printed out some of the surgical journals at home which I downloaded from the university's drive.

After careful selection, I still managed to print out 20 sets of the journals. There are about 300 sets of journals in there. I know it's impossible to study everything so there's no point to print them all.

Three more weeks down the road for this posting. I have not scrub-in in the operating theater yet. But during my anaesthesia posting I managed to intubate a 77 year old patient successfully. It was my first try on a live person and to be honest I was quite surprised that it was not that hard as I imagined.


The heart-pumping corridor. We will be there in less than 5 months time.


Remember I mentioned that my 1.5 years old Dell XPS laptop fried? I got it fixed and the price costed a netbook's price. Funny enough, Dell sent me a complimentary speaker to my house, as informed to me during the phone call.

I thought it could be like the 2.1 ch power woofer system, like the Edifier I'm using now, but who knows it turned out to be super portable;



Ok, I didn't shouldn't have any expectations.

I thought that they would give me something cool because of the payment I made for the repair. It turned out to be a pair of ultra compact laptop speakers which run on USB power.

Very slim, can be kept in the pocket. Can put in 4 AAA batteries in the battery pack as external power source without the USB. "Natural" sound indeed as stated in the cover, I used it once in university when I was practicing drums with Eugene since the XPS's speakers aren't loud enough.

Have to wake up in five and a half hours of time. Better read up and then go to sleep.

440# Oppvåkning

I did this on purpose. It's all part of the plan. I stopped updating since the last day of last year and wanted to see what would happen if I stop writing.

Apparently the flow of the visitors is still constant, and I have notice that most of the visitors are from the states, and visitors from this country is in fact 50% than from the states. So why bother?



After being threatened that one of my orifice will be digitally examined with wasabi by one of the visitor, which I assumed to be my housemate, I decided to type in a post. It is, in fact in one of my to-do-list for this Saturday.

Chinese New Year is over. So do the major postings - General practice, orthopaedics and psychiatry. I missed one week of psychiatry posting due to a viral infection, what a great start for the year.



The theory papers for the major postings were extremely difficult. I don't feel good at all like the rest. The results should be out soon. That would drive the momentum for me to study even harder.

Oh well, I'm not studying that hard now afterall, which I'm supposed to. Finished radiology posting and currently one more week to go for anaesthesiology posting. Unlike other major postings, I don't have exam next week, where these postings' exams will be taken together with my last posting's paper.



Therefore, I am, extremely under worked. I'm not sure how many times I said this but one thing for sure, I'm losing the drive to study. I still do study, just that I don't feel the momentum in me.

The next posting will be surgery. From the most relaxing posting I'll be leaping to the busiest posting. That's not very good. Reaching the ward 7.00am every morning, and need to cover the ward every night is definitely an overkill. I have seen how tired my batch mates already are, and I'm looking forward to that.



On the side note, my 1.5 years old Dell XPS 1530 had his motherboard or GPU burnt. The overheating issue was said to be the infamous nvidia GeForce 8400 GS's fault. Twelve months of extended warranty was available for this defect and apparently my model was said to be the new, rectified model which is not covered for this warranty.

What to do? I can't live without the laptop just like the rest. More than just entertainment purpose, we do need the laptop to study, type reports, prepare PowerPoint slides, read journals... Without it I could not function at all.



After days of consideration, I decided to pay for a one year warranty to renew the damaged parts of the laptop. Seems that the motherboard is gone and it got replaced together with the GPU and audio card.

I summoned the technician to the university on the next day, since I'm not at home most of the time. This would be the only good thing about Dell, its fast and friendly after service. But heck, I've gotten the new motherboard with the same GPU! Hope it won't fail me again.

Now I got the laptop revived and today, I have finished typing two community and family case study reports and prepared a PowerPoint slides on post operative analgesic drugs. Indeed, the laptop is very, very important for me.



One thing falls along with the other. Hours ago I wanted to play the guitar. After taking out the cables, plugged in the amplifier, i noticed that the B string was off, again. I loosen the Allen key on the neck as to tune it, and the high E string snapped.

What the heck? I just spent a fortune 5 months ago for intonation and now the string snapped. I'm not going to the same non-floyd rose bridge-friendly music store in Seremban again. I would, just to buy the strings but I won't let them to change it for me. I'd rather do it myself.

Music night is next month and my electric guitar has snapped. Just like last year when I wanted to record the song for my electives that mentioned music shop screwed up my guitar. Panic.

Time is running fast, I need to catch up.

439# Entering 2010

2009 was a bad year.

The only good thing was that I passed my EOS7.

And the previous elective and selective.

Hope 2010 will make a difference.

Happy New Year.

438# Merry Christmas

It's Christmas eve now and I'm home bound.

I didn't even notice that today is the eve, I have been lost track to dates ever since my elective started.



Christmas trees are everywhere, at every major malls which I went.

It's a good reminder for people. These decorations reminds of people of the festival, so that people will shop for Christmas presents for their friends and family.

So in that way, spending a small amount of money for these decorations can stimulate the business of the shopping complex. Isn't that just brilliant?

And I guess that applies for all the festivals in our country throughout the year.



Christmas is never part of my celebration list. I used to follow my friends to go to the Churches for celebrations, about a thousand years back. I also went to friends' houses for turkeys.

Ever since I went to the university, I took out this festival from my celebration list. Therefore, it's been a while since I accept any Christmas gift from people.



Oh yes, we did have Christmas gift exchange during the pre-clinical school days. And that time our university always have celebrations for it and we got free food and sketches going on there.

Having said so, I just remembered that last year I performed during Christmas in the clinical school. I was on the drums for a short song and Dr. Sheila and Esther were on the vocals, along with a group of choir.

And I left after my performance and went to the lounge to study.



This year, I missed the Christmas performance in the university because I'm currently away and doing my selective. During this period, apart from the Christmas celebration, I also missed out the chance to perform for Diwali night!

They were short of drummer that time and I was asked to go back to help. I really wanted to but I was doing my attachment in KL that time so I have to decline them. Chances of me being on stage for music performance is getting lesser and lesser now, sad.



I guess Christmas is just not my kind of thing. I'm going to meet up with a few sticks from my university tomorrow for lunch and at night, another stick for guitar stuff.

Few days ago I saw Santa and I requested to take a photo with him. I snatched his ukulele from him and he did this flying pose. A nice guy who has done a great job in attracting people's attention there.

Under the white beard I could see his perfectly fair skin. I think he was from Korvatunturi in Lapland Province, no doubt for that.

Merry Christmas people. May Santa makes your wallet thicker.

That's my wish.