Why Queue...again?

2007-11-30T13:02:00.000+08:00

The Pharmers' Connection

In response to constance's blog, and a grim reminder of pharmaco paper. Let no more brain cells die, no more meningeal arteries be vasodilated, let us never sit for any more pharmaco papers again.

Why are there so many notes for us pharmers
And all printed on both sides
Pharmers have visions, but they're just illusions
And pharmers have nothing to hide
So we've been told just choose to believe it
But I know they're wrong, wait and see
someday we'll find it
that pharmer's connection
the muggers, the dreamers and me

Is it that every word,
every line and answer
the page with the big, big star
somebody said "this will come out, believe it"
and look what its done so far
what's so amazing
that keeps us revising
what so we think we might glean
someday we'll find it
that pharmer's connection
the muggers, the dreamers and me

All of us under a spell,
we know this test's probably tragic...

Do you just want to sleep
and start hearing voices?
Saying don't write your name.
Is this the answer that will get you an A+?
Or leave you cowering in shame?
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that just supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it, the pharmer connection,
the muggers, the dreamers and me.

2007-11-26T01:43:00.000+08:00

Of all the time in the world...

... that i have, now, 48 hours left to the dreaded triple-battery PDP exams (Patho, DFD, Pharmaco),

i shouldn't be blogging.

Well....

Was talking about what to take next sem with nuan. She wasn't feeling too well just now, so i'd thought i'd cheer her up a bit. So we talked about this. Promised to take at least one module with her in NUS. Finding it a bit difficult, considering the fact that her break clashes with my lesson and vice versa this sem. Life is hard. Also, most of what i wanted to take (e.g. psychology), she had taken, and because of this, some modules are not available to me but available to her.

The only exception is marketing. Was deciding between mkt2401 and pr1301. however, pr1301 is not offered next sem (shucks). Checked the timetable for mkt2401, the prognosis is so far good, the tumor has not metastasized.

The only thing dragging me back is that mkt2401 is a very heavy module (although i've wanted to take it at some point in my uni life) and coupled with my four other not-so-interesting (esp. Pharmacotherapy I??? asking for death???) modules, you can cut my throat one sem in advance. Projects, assignments, research, etc etc.

The only good thing is that, mkt2401 is no-exam (according to this sem). Well, we'll have to hear the diagnosis from junice first.

***

And with that, made me think about what i wanna do in the future... there are at least three paths.
1) Retail / Hospital Pharmacist; sit in pharmacy, dispense drugs, advise people on ADR, look for drug interactions, "advise" doctors, get scolded, get intimidated by drug addicts, fawn rich people.

The pay isn't very good i heard, and there's CPE. But what comes with it is the relative job security (some pharmacists do get axed, esp. if they screw up big), the regular or fixed job hours it provides, and the satisfaction (well, almost) to see someone's illness get cured, partly due to your doing. When the day is over, go back and fetch the kids, help to prepare dinner, and be a good daddy.

I recently read the blog of a retail pharmacist, and it was quite inspiring - a very simple, quiet life, filled with anecdotes of the little charming things in and outside work. Sitting in the pharmacy and watching the days and customers go by while sipping a cuppa (in the back room), greeting customers with a smile, and seeing them leave with a smile. I met the guy once in person, although we never really talked, but one could see that he radiated an aura. Of calmness?

2) Throw away the license and go into business, manufacturing or regulatory, etc: seems even more remote. The range of pay is much larger than being a pharmacist (i think), but you're on your two hands, treading a tightrope day by day, at least that's how i would feel. But the dough you knead is good. All the people i met at the Pharmacy Congress - that's what they chose, and those who were there truly lived to tell fantastic tales of how they started from scratch to build their business empires. I am no born businessman, though. I wish money would fall from the skies, haha. $500 per day would be good.

3) Others: well, i haven't given much thought to this yet, since i have presented with no other talents and disciplines...

Hmm, i entered university without much of a thought of what i would become - and now, i am still lost.

2007-11-23T12:01:00.000+08:00

Generalized (tonic-clonic) Seizures

From wikipedia.

[edit] Pathophysiology

The vast majority of generalised seizures are idiopathic. ^[1] However, some generalised seizures start as a smaller seizure such as a simple partial seizure or a complex partial seizure and then spread to both hemispheres of the brain. This is called a secondary generalisation. ^[2] In the case of idiopathic epilepsy, it is not certain what is the cause of the seizures. However, it is believed that factors could include chemical and neurotransmitter imbalances, and a genetically determined seizure threshold, which have both been implicated. The seizure threshold can be altered by fatigue, malnutrition, lack of sleep or rest, hypertension, stress, diabetes, the presence of neon or laser flashes or lights, rapid motion or flight, blood sugar imbalances, anxiety and other factors. ^[3]

In the case of symptomatic epilepsy, it is often determined by MRI or other neuroimaging techniques that there is some degree of damage to a large number of neurons.^[4] The lesions (scar tissue) caused by the loss of these neurons can result in groups of neurons episodically firing abnormally, creating a seizure.

Phases

The seizures are divided into two phases, the tonic phase and the clonic phase, hence the name of the seizure, though a tonic-clonic seizure will often be preceded by an aura.

In the aura, the person may feel a sense of strong deja vu, lightheadedness and/or dizziness, unusual (and possibly inappropriate) emotions, altered vision and hearing (which may or may not include hallucinations), and sometimes other symptoms. This is actually a simple partial seizure. Sometimes, the person will lose complete awareness and start making odd or pointless movements (such as picking at clothes) towards the end of the aura, at which point the seizure has progressed to become a complex partial seizure. The aura stage is due to the fact that tonic-clonic seizures often start in an isolated area of the brain, and gradually progress to the whole brain, at which point it becomes a tonic-clonic seizure. An aura may last as little as a few seconds up to several minutes, depending on the person, and some people with epilepsy do not experience auras at all. It should also be noted that in many individuals, not all auras result in a tonic-clonic seizure.

In the tonic phase, the person will fall unconscious, and the person's muscles will suddenly tense up, often causing the extremities to either be pulled towards the body or rigidly pushed away from it, which will cause the person to fall to the ground if they are standing. The tonic phase is usually the shortest part of the seizure, usually lasting only a few seconds. The person may also express vocalisations sounding like a loud moan during the tonic stage, though this is not always the case.

In the clonic phase, the person's muscles will start to contract and relax rapidly, causing convulsions. These may range from exaggerated twitches of the arms and legs to violent shaking or vibrating of the stiffened extremities. The person may roll and stretch as the seizure spreads. The eyes typically roll back, the tongue is often bitten, and incontinence is seen in some cases. Post-ictal sleep invariably follows a tonic-clonic seizure. Confusion and amnesia upon awakening is usually experienced.

First aid

Many people who experience tonic-clonic seizures will be aware of an oncoming seizure for up to several minutes before the full seizure begins. This is called an aura and is typically a simple partial seizure or a complex partial seizure which has spread to the whole brain. However, many people who have epilepsy do not experience auras. If a person reports they believe they are about to have a seizure, their safety should be ensured. This can be done by laying them into the recovery position, and removing any objects which may pose a danger to the person during the seizure. If the person does not experience an aura, and goes directly into a seizure, they should be gently eased to the ground if possible.

Once the convulsions have begun, the seizure must simply run its course. No attempt to restrain the person should be made because this risks injury to either party, instead it should be ensured that they do not injure themselves by placing something soft under their head, and ensuring their limbs and body don't bump into walls or other objects. If the person vomits, the person's head should be placed to the side to allow the vomit to run out of the mouth without blocking the airway. Nothing should ever be placed into the person's mouth, as this can cause the person to bite their tongue or choke, (or injure the one placing the object into their mouth). Despite popular belief, it is not possible for someone having a seizure to swallow their tongue. The frenulum of the tongue prevents this.

Once the seizure ends, the person will stop convulsing, the limbs will go limp, and the person will be completely unconscious for a while. Once they start to come to, they will usually be tired, disoriented, and unaware they have had a seizure. A person having a seizure should never be left unattended until they are fully recovered.

If the person is known to have epilepsy, it is not usually necessary to call an ambulance. However, if the person is not known to have epilepsy, the seizure lasts four to five minutes or longer, the person has a second seizure before regaining consciousness, or the person injures themselves or stops breathing (apnea) during or after the seizure, medical attention is needed.

2007-11-23T11:53:00.000+08:00

Photosensitive Epilepsy (PSE)

Finally found it... from Wikipedia.

***

Photosensitive epilepsy is a form of epilepsy in which seizures are triggered by visual stimuli that form patterns in time or space, such as flashing lights, bold, regular patterns, or regular moving patterns.

Symptoms

Persons with PSE experience epileptiform seizures upon exposure to certain visual stimuli. The exact nature of the stimulus or stimuli that triggers the seizures varies from one patient to another, as does the nature and severity of the resulting seizures (ranging from brief absence seizures to full tonic-clonic seizures). Many PSE patients experience an “aura” or feel odd sensations before the seizure occurs, and this can serve as a warning to a patient to move away from the trigger stimulus.

Treatment and prognosis

No cure is available for PSE, although the sensitivity of some patients may diminish over time. Medical treatment is available to reduce sensitivity, with sodium valproate being commonly prescribed. Patients can also learn to avoid situations in which they might be exposed to stimuli that trigger seizures and/or take steps to diminish their sensitivity (as by covering one eye) if they are unavoidably exposed. These actions together can reduce the risk of seizures to almost zero for many PSE patients.

Some PSE patients have trigger stimuli that are so specific that they are never likely to encounter them in real life. Their PSE may only be discovered by accident in an unusual situation or during examination for other complaints.

The visual trigger for a seizure is generally cyclic, forming a regular pattern in time or space. Flashing lights or rapidly changing or alternating images (as in clubs, around emergency vehicles, in action movies or television programs, etc.) are an example of patterns in time that can trigger seizures, and these are the most common triggers. Static spatial patterns such as stripes and squares may trigger seizures as well, even if they do not move. In some cases, the trigger must be both spatially and temporally cyclic, such as a certain moving pattern of bars.

Several characteristics are common in the trigger stimuli of many PSE patients. The patterns are usually high in luminance contrast (bright flashes of light alternating with darkness, or white bars against a black background). Contrasts in color alone (without changes in luminance) are rarely triggers for PSE. Some patients are more affected by patterns of certain colors than by patterns of other colors. The exact spacing of a pattern in time or space is important and varies from one individual to another: a patient may readily experience seizures when exposed to lights that flash seven times per second, but may be unaffected by lights that flash twice per second or twenty times per second. Stimuli that fill the entire visual field are more likely to cause seizures than those that appear in only a portion of the visual field. Stimuli perceived with both eyes are usually much more likely to cause seizures than stimuli seen with one eye only (which is why covering one eye may allow patients to avoid seizures when presented with visual challenges). Some patients are more sensitive with their eyes closed; others are more sensitive with their eyes open.

Sensitivity is increased by alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, and other forms of stress.

2007-11-21T23:05:00.000+08:00

Preparations

Finally, after eleven waves of attacks, like swarms of flying hornets, the tests are over.

I think i'm quite ok for pharmaco. Well, ok enough. Well, maybe not so. I guess i'm average.

Looking at the range of people from As to Fs outright, it can be seen, that some people hated this test. And well - what the heck - for an average score after studying like 3 days in advance and sacrificing my med chem (which was even harder!!) test the next day, i got this result.

Well, at least i didn't get much worse. Some justice there though.

No comments for the fallen. Everyone will despise his or her score anyway, myself included. Well, i guess i'm too tired to even care.

But yet... in the midst of them all, are people who scored As. Well, either they've been very hardworking, or God must have given them something extra. For this sem, i'm neither.

Back to anticlotting drugs. I'm worried for patho. It says "the whole syllabus". I wonder what that mean.

3 days of hell, 72 hours of pure cramming, deleting and cramming. Why do people who set the exam dates have no brain, to put 3 memory-laden exams one after another.

2007-11-19T18:27:00.000+08:00

It's that time of the year again... (part 2)

Oh yes, the smses were great. Totally made my day.

Now i know why i feel so introverted this sem, like i'm in my own planet Zeus some 10 light-years away from here.

I forgot to tell everyone that i changed my handphone number!!! ARGH.

In fact, other than deardear and bx, no one said HB to me at 0000.. which is so sad... wondered why till today, when cons and jw said something about sending something to my old phone without getting a reply.

Just to say, for all the friends that send me the message, you made my day! (and made DFD notes more interesting!)

And to say, for all the friends who wondered why i was so dao, you have to endure this long explanation that my sim card spoilt in Sep, so i changed to a new one, then i was just either too busy to sms everyone with that message saying "Hi, I'm whyqueue, i just changed my number to ......."

And hence, everything you sent to me, was greeted with cold, utter, wasted, silence. Sincere apologies for that.

And i will probably send that changing of number message to everyone after exam.. a signal from Zeus to Earth. Hopefully someone will pick it up...

2007-11-19T18:19:00.000+08:00

It's that time of the year again...

And cons, it's not christmas, no... haha

Yeah.. all i know is that, there's EIGHT freaking days to exam. 08 days to exam omg. and i've not touched anything.

Correction. i managed to sift through Kurup's notes. Not done yet though. Most of it is what i've revised for DFD2 test anyway.

2 days for DFD2, 3 days for pharmaco, 3 days for patho.
Objective: to average a B for all three subjects. Acutally, objective: to screw it and write all the shit i know at the point in time down, get it over and done with. Survive until 30th Nov.

Like the song said, "wake me up, when November ends." since i'm year 1, i've started singing it every year. Oh sorry. It's september, not november.

Then face the dreaded Med Chem (Target: no D+ and below).
Then study like mad for the last paper.
Then, after a short rendezvous with deardear, after the exam, spend the next three days in deep meditation with my team to India.
And then fly off.

2007-11-01T04:16:00.000+08:00

Insomnia... again.

Can't get to sleep again.

After all this long while... i finally rebounded back to insomnia. Do i need a benzodiazepine??

The same complaints again: feeling sleepy, but somewhere in my mind i'm awake, not very alert though. When i close my eyes i don't enter deep sleep.

Instead, i think of all the things that happen to me during the day. and these things drift from missing 8am pharmaco lecture, screwing up 11am dfd2 presentation, missing 2pm patho lecture as a result of my insomnia.

When i try to relax, i think back of the horrible quarrel that i had about 12 hours ago, and all the things come back to me again. The anger felt, which led to an increase in adrenaline. What i should have done. What i should not have done. What if it turned out this way, what if it turned out the other way. One thousand possibilities, all playing out in my mind, like a non-stop cassette tape recording.

Then i drift off to other things like YEP, homework, how screwed i am for friday's test cos i'm going to spend most of thursday sleeping, and how to get my ass out of this mess. Each branches out to a thousand more different stories.

As a result, i never felt the decrease in sympathetic activity. Heart keeps beating like crazy, i can feel it bumping along the chest wall as i inhale. Wonder if i have cardiac myohypertrophy. Wonder i should take an ECG or something. Took some propanolol. Wonder if there'll be a drug interaction, or am i too sedated enough. Thinking of taking some cough mixture, scared of lapsing into a coma.

And to top it all off, i can't talk to any of my friends now, nor tomorrow, cos most of them are probably studying for test. And i can't talk to my girlfriend, and i don't talk to my parents.

Now the time is 4:27 AM. In half an hour's later, it will be 5AM, and the first train from the depot will rumble into Jurong East MRT station, bringing with it the hustle and bustle of the new day. And i will be worried, whether to carry on the new day without sleep, or to go home and rest halfway. Or to totally not come to school.

I really need a break. Someone just be merciful and put me to sleep.

2007-10-31T23:48:00.000+08:00

Seething with anger resulting from love

(Since now the blog is dead, probably no one will peek at this note.)

I need an outlet. Before i start studying for my DFD2 practical test, which i foresee i will screw it up anyway. Serious.

I've realised that there's something that's quite robotic, quite mechanical about me this sem. I never needed an outlet, and hence i never needed to blog about anything. Homework suddenly became secondary to YEP. And all the bad stuff about YEP went to bingxun, whom shared the load.

Another thing about the absence of an outlet is because of my girlfriend. Not that i talk much to her though about my problems, most of the details still lie hidden in the gyri and sulci, as it is very hard for it to come out. To put it comparatively and in a very biological manner, whatever signals the brain sends to my fingers is probably more efficient than whatever signals it sends to my larynx. I always have to think of what to talk, coming up with many different options, often the words for both options come tumbling out in a swift torrent. I think i'm beginning to have a speech problem.

Anyway, still have not reached the point of what i'm about to let go. Today went to fetch the missus after her lessons. Was it the pills or was it because of a lack of sleep, that made me a bit irritable. Or was it the looming tests ahead that encircled me constantly like a huge thunderstorm. Was generally not very responsive and chatty as a result.

We talked along the way as we waited for the bus, with her opening up more topics and me trying to close them. Somehow or rather the topic shifted to her own problems, and everything came out in a torrent. Won't be too dramatic here, i'll be more objective - 20 minutes of pure listening from the point we left clementi interchange to the point we reached jurong east. And she talks very fast. And we were sitting at the back of the bus, so there was this incessant humming of the darn bus which drowned out like 50% of what she was saying.

The thing about hearing is that, at least for me, if my brain perceives what is something like conversation, it will analyse it. Especially more so if i'm tired but not falling asleep - everything you say, i can hear it, even its from the other end of the corner. I guess one explanation is that, when the mind is tired, it tries to sleep. And for me, total silence must be achieved before the sleep cycles begin. I guess you can call me a light-sleeper of sorts.

And so, you have the situation. A long, continuous message (about 3-4 words/second)? trailing on and on and on for 20 minutes. And 50% drowned out by the darned engine of the bus. I dunno why, but my whole body heated up.

One topic let to another as more problems were revealed. I guess she really needed an outlet to express herself or something. And i was not, at that point in time, a very good outlet to do so. Like earlier, I was trying to close the doors that had opened by offering solutions to her problems, but she just keep going on and on, and i knew that she just needed an outlet along the way to spill her problems out, but my neuronal activities were very high, there was this time where i felt like i might just snap and scream at her to shut up in front of all the passengers, or lapse into a fit. Although, i should have, and should be the correct way, is to tell her my condition on the bus and maybe she can tell me her problems later in installments.

Was it pure, loving torture? How much, when we say that we can provide a listening ear, that we can really listen? After we got down from the bus, really felt like a bit of nausea and headache. Then the retaliation began that really screwed the day up. Somehow i got a bit of heated up as the conversation proceeded, then said something about "if you can't solve the problem in the near future, just don't worry about it" which made perfect sense to me but zero sense to her, of course. I wasn't being very empathic about her problem, but i had no strength left in me to do so. Then the backlash, i forgot what i said, but in the course of that particular few minutes, everything turned super ugly and i could see it written on her face all over. Was feeling a bit pissed too as what had initially turned to be the last rendezvous before i go intensive on my revision for the two DFD tests turned out to be so sour. And she felt moody after that.

Imagine - from a happy setting before we took the bus - to getting moody after the bus. The problem with her is that she'll get moody after pouring all her problems out. And when she's moody she's quite unpredictable. I really feel guilty at saying this out.

Then the blame started to shoot from each other - although she says she is not angry, she is. After all that i've said, it's quite hard not to be angry right?

Then i felt the indescribable bout of anger - coming from someone so truly loved - that surged through my entire self, almost made a scene as she just left me to take the bus home. Clenching fists, flushed face, tachycardia, as well as an almost uncontrollable urge to hurl my bag down in disbelief and bewilderment engulfed me. Anger that lies so deep, so hurtful.

One week curfew starting from now, ending next tuesday till DFD2 tests are finished. Gonna add on to the agony.

There. Sorta released most of the tension by posting. Hope you do NOT read this, dear. I need an outlet too, for your information. And since when i try to complain about you to you it resulted in such a mess, i decided to do it online. Hope you understand.

I know that life is sometime a pain. Everyone has their own pains, i believe. I'd just like to solve them for you. Maybe that's what guys like to do, whereas girls just like to express, but don't expect a solution. Maybe that's why people in love can quarrel so often.

My own pains, i've probably been numb to them all the while, preferring to escape outright. After all, there are so many problems out there, and not every one of them has a solution. I would prefer to be happy, and i really am when i am with you on the other days.

Maybe it's because today's Halloween, so there's the rogue witch that casted a cruel joke upon us~

2007-10-15T18:57:00.001+08:00

Back to posting.. short ones.

Suddenly i find myself back here again. Usually the first thing i will do will be to tell my girlfriend, but she's having some pilates lessons right now... so i'll tell her later.

Went to the docs at YIH to do my medical checkup.. what should've been a breeze through revealed that my blood pressure went up to 140/90.

Quite stunned at the result, cos all along my BP has been around 120/80, normal. Started to think back.. and here are all the signs:

1) occasional, very mild pain in the thoracic area
2) heavy panting on running a few metres
3) ballooning - exceeding the 80kg limit
4) hardening of stomach fats
5) when i fell down at St John's island and injured my sole, the blood was dripping out, faster than i had expected it to be.
6) legs being very prone to getting numb after sitting cross-legged.

Etiology:
1) Hardly any exercise since... when was the last time i exercised??
2) Excessively huge amounts of salt, sugar, MSG in food. Too much fatty food.

As i study pathology now, and i look at the pictures of organs or tissues of people undergoing myocardial infarction (heart attack), ischaemic heart disease, thromboembolism, stroke and etc, i can't help but wonder, if someday, i'm going to end up like that.

Passed by Jingwen, Lin Qun and Xuanwei running along the track and think, when the hell am i going to join them...?

2007-08-18T21:04:00.000+08:00

Blogging... finally

Mood: down.

Hmm, decide to blog because of someone who wants to read.. but yeah i haven't blogged for very long anyway...

Yeah... ever since 25 june i really haven't had a good break... kept on doing things. Home seems like a hostel room, when you come home just to sleep and have dinner...

I shall blog about some of the things during this period.

(1) Part 4: Preceptorship - i guess, it was shitty - to an extent. Yeah i learnt a lot... but i would rather have the nice-preceptor type as some of my friends did. Hearing them extol many virtues about their preceptors and listening to myself falling silent when they expect me to describe my own, makes me feel that, why did we do it all for?

Although are times that preceptorship was fun, more so when you finally learn the slight tricks of the trade. And there was the nice company of pre-regs and my colleague Entian, as well as the pharmacy staff there which sent me through the hell.

To all my friends - you may have nice fond memories of your workplace and the experiences had there, but I just wanted to say for my case: Thank God It Ended.

My grade wasn't at all fantastic - i don't think anyone got less than i did. The fault lies partly with myself too, so can't say much about that. I'm not revealing much.

(2) Part 5: Genting Holidays - never knew that going on a holidays would be such a stressful event. I didn't know why. I didn't enjoy myself as much as i wanted. The many choices i made, some of them terribly wrong.

Berjaya Hills is an extremely quaint place with nice hilly versions of Alsace-Lorraine in France, with similar replicas of castles and towns. Lovely. I'd recommend all fans of fairy tales to go and visit there.

Highlights of the trip there were swimming in air-con conditions (it's about 2000-3000 ft above sea level), an hour-long trek up a hill for about 1-2km, the nice surroundings, the lovely castle-town we stayed in, and the rolling hills. And, of course, the air-con.

Genting was quite a disappointment. Met another couple from pharmacy (is it so popular?) up there. The whole place feels like a gigantic shopping complex - registration is so complex and bureaucratic - there's separate counters for tour groups and individual guests, where you had to queue up and take a number (gosh!)

We didn't go for the more thrilling rides located in the outdoor theme park due to my epileptic condition. Instead we opted for the first world theme park which was something like Korea's Lotte World, but with less fun. It had alot of family-themed rides, which were SLOW and BORING, but little of the exciting stuff.

We played dodgems (quite good), some roller coaster (very short!) and there was this 4D-experience thing which was a disappointment. We had more fun eating the various eateries there though, there's like a 20% discount wrt Singaporean prices on food.

Watched Transformers there, it was quite good =) Felt like a king in the exclusive seating (RM 15).

(3) First Week of School

Sunday - did emed video for recruitment: 8am to 3pm. call it retribution. then did the usual stuff like print notes, note the timetable, etc. It suddenly dawned to me that the workload of TWO recruitment drives may, no, will, drive me crazy. PLUS - i haven't finished my preceptorship report. PLUS - secret project is not done yet. Basically, i'm screwed. And i wanted to spend the last day of holidays with nuan.

Monday - Shaggest day: 7am to 11pm, non-stop.
8am: pharmaco lecture. thyroid system. quite interesting.
10am: dfd2 lecture. prof kurup is quite patient, but he goes very slowly. zzzz.
12pm: rushed to biz for financial accounting lecture. can see that this module is somewhat useful. but hectic... and the lecturer is funny, but he is not very sympathetic towards students: "lecturers and teaching staff are not responsible for your bidding. don't go after them."
2pm: rushed back to sci for patho lecture. two lecturers: the ang mo guy was totally useless in going through Cell Injury. total waste of time. the singaporean uncle was firebrand, so powerful that i was scribbling like mad until he finished.
4pm: meeting with nusps, to introduce more about yep. at last a breather.
7pm: dinner with bingxun to discuss more about yep, as well as plan the recruitment drive.
11pm: left nus.

Tuesday - only one lecture - Med Chem - for today. Only two hours, but dunno why i was so darn drowsy. Actually slept in the lecture, despite having like 8 hours of sleep. Was so groggy and dazed, i just left Bingxun to present to the year 4s alone - which was a good choice - he presented so much better than me.

(post not finished)

2007-07-20T00:51:00.000+08:00

The click five - Jenny

Heard this song at work today over 98.7fm. Nice synth pop sound =)

***

She calls me baby, then she won't call me.
Says she adores me and then ignores me.
Jenny, what's the problem?
She keeps her distance and sits on fences.
Puts up resistance and builds defenses.

Jenny, what's the problem?
You leave me hanging on the line.
Every time you change your mind.

First You say you won't, then you say you will.
You keep me hanging on, and we're not moving on.
I"m standing still, Jenny. You got me on my knees.
Jenny, it's killing me.

She needs her own space. She's playing mind games.
Ends up at my place saying that she's changed.
Jenny, what's the problem?
I'm trying to read between the lines.
You got me going out of my mind.

First, you say you won't, then you say you will.
You keep me hanging on, and we're not moving on.
I'm standing still, Jenny. You got me on my knees.
Jenny, it's killing me. It's killing me. It's killing me.
Jenny.

First, you say you won't, then you say you will.
You keep me hanging on, and I'm not moving on.
I'm standing still, Jenny. You got me on my knees.
Jenny.

First, you say you won't, then you say you will.
You keep me hanging on, and we're not moving on.
I'm standing still, Jenny. You got me on my knees.
Jenny. It's killing me. It's killing me. Jenny.

2007-07-12T00:11:00.000+08:00

Linkin Park - Numb

thought this was a love song.... only recently that i realised that it can be applied in other ways...

***

i'm tired of being what you want me to be
feeling so faithless
lost under the surface
i don't know what you're expecting of me
put under the pressure
of walking in your shoes
[caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]
every step that i take is another mistake to you

*i've
become so numb
i can't feel you there
become so tired
so much more aware
i'm becoming this
all i want to do
is be more like me
and be less like you

can't you see that you're smothering me
holding too tightly
afraid to lose control
cause everything that you thought i would be
has fallen apart right in front of you

[caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]
every step that i take is another mistake to you
[caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]
and every second i waste is more than i can take

Repeat Chorus

and i know
i may end up failing too
but i know
you were just like me
with someone disappointed in you

Repeat Chorus

2007-07-11T23:45:00.001+08:00

Prece*torship - Day 15

ok, for the other side of the coin...

hell didn't have much fury today. maybe cos the whole day i was trying to avoid her, but haha...

some heartfelt thanks:

1) M, one of the pre-regs, bought me nasi lemak today for breakfast. but i came in at 11am with breakfast eaten! so i had to leave it hanging around... no time to eat it during breathers anyway. and by the time work ended... it was already too late.

i guess i was pretty downcast yesterday... some r/s probs... and that dragged into the work on tuesday. Not sad, but not very happy either. Haha... no, not cos of S.

Must get her something once i get the chance.

2) finally found out why R, the PT, always offered so much stuff to me to eat during work time - cookies, munch bars, biscuits, etc. I always thought that it was because of our good working relations, but it seems like her sons are about the same age as me... so thats why i get the preferential treatment.. entian i hope u are not getting jealous.. haha.

3) dined with M (a different M from (1)), and was very impressed by her career plans. gave me some inspiration to where my career should (or ought to) lie. for so long i've been so clueless to which path i should take as a pharmacist. obviously not retail, for life. nor hospital. maybe industry.

4) got tested by S today at the analgesics. i think i did a lousy job, partly cos we were stammering, partly cos i didn't memo the day before. ended up with lots of homework to do, which i'm supposed to do but i ended up blogging instead.

5) sudden change of heart! had a premonition that someone will be scolded for the huge mess in the excess P-medicines cupboard, after the huge influx of stuff coming in two days ago. And -

if S saw it, i reckoned:

i had a 50% chance of being called up ad re-stocking the medicines,
and if i were called up, i had a 100% chance of getting scolded.

...that was before entian left. After she left, the chance of being called up rose to 100%. you can figure why. So i wasn't too affected when S started to berate me again.. it stings, but more used to it. well she 's pissed, so let her let off steam then... But then M (the one in (1)) suddenly said that it was actually everyone who was responsible and that i always get the blame... then i think she felt bad about it and actually lowered her tone after i had done the task, even sending me a "well-done" sms after i went home.

I guess, people do have the other side of the coin.

(6) nice evening with the missus... (classified)

ah... a good day.

2007-07-10T21:30:00.000+08:00

Prece*torship - Day 14

Having tahaned at my workplace for two weeks, Week 3 happens to be more relaxed. At least, for Monday and Tuesday.

Firstly, S went on medical leave on monday. No more scoldings. Maybe like what she said, other people could have scolded me for screwing up but they didn't, so i can't learn anything - but she will.

I dunno whether her going on medical leave is good or bad, or it is just temporary relief. Hell hath its fury tomorrow when she comes back to work.

Let's introduce some of the working staff there. I guess everyone's there's quite nice.

Firstly there's Entian, my other counterpart (student) at the place. Our working hours are staggered, and we have different lunch breaks. Hence, unlike what i thought, we don't communicate very much. And there's not much chance to communicate either - the place is so busy.

There are two pre-regs there. Nice people that you can depend on, especially when it comes to brand-generic problems. In addition, there's also one pharmacy technician (PT) who always treats me to food... as well as collect the product inserts inside the packaging - in exchange, i do most of the computer work for her.

the various pharmacy assistants (PA) and product promoters are very nice too. they are the experts when it comes to locating items outside the pharmacy - some of them can even tell you the availability of a product to the exact size (small, medium, large) that is stocked to the country of manufacture.

oh and one of the PAs calls me her darling! *faints*

furthermore in addition to the people i've seen, there are the various locums and "replacements" that i've seen - pharmacists from paragon, west mall, taka, and so far, 3 locums. some of them do talk to you - and do remember your name. it's actually quite nice working with them.

and of course, there's our (entian and me) prece*tors.

Work - it's tiring. i may work one of the lesser hours-per-day (7 hours) compared to others, but these hours are hell. imagine a situation where p-form after p-form keeps coming in and you have a whole avalanche of customers waiting outside, some impatiently. also, there's the other extreme - like these two days - it was so quiet that we could finally have lunch, go toilet, stack up some drugs, have a small chat, learn some stuff or finally do the things that we wanna do.

I would say... the work here is bearable. Though i'm probably not going to learn much, or any of the minor ailments stuff. But i guess i will get a good headstart on the POM medications and (hopefully) my speed in keying Rx will be faster. You win some, you lose some.

Tomorrow - will hell hath its fury? Stay tuned...

2007-07-10T21:07:00.001+08:00

Prece*torship - Day 9

(backdated entry)

got super-screwed by my prece*tor today. sigh. ok i have to admit, it wasn't the most alert of days either.

highlights of the day were that i had to call a doc in the same building to verify some stuff... and being the first time to call a doc (and we all have nice experiences of "calling docs" in school...) i actually forgot to take a notepad and pen to the phone. and then the doc just rambled on some complex instruction which my brain forgot to capture. no choice - had to call doc again, and i guess she was quite irritated.

then got scolding from preceptor (S) cos of my illegible, "ugly" scribble on the P-form.

S was abit on the warpath today, i suddenly find out that i get scolded for alot of stuff that i was not responsible for - proper stacking of drugs, rehab counter, p-drug counter, etc. then a bit more screwups and more scoldings, and suddenly i thought - just let them scold, it's just an ave for them to flare up, why bother to feel hurt?

why bother to even do well then? when you are going to get scolded all the same?

suddenly my voice became from loud... to soft... to a voice sapped of energy. and pride.

a partial order that she told me over the disp counter was not conveyed to the dispensers inside and that resulted in the loss of 10-20 labels. the people inside had happily packed all the medication, which could have resulted in big sales, but the customer had only wanted one of the six items.

as a result - we had to tear off the labels for the drugs that the customer didn't ask for. all because i didn't say that it was a partial order. ok... lesson learnt.

coup de grace came about 1 hour before dismissal, where i was typing stuff at the front counter and she was counselling a patient about a medication. being engrossed in the keying in of data, i didn't notice that she had finished, and the patient was supposed to pay.

the patient came to me, thinking that this was the counter for paying. since the drug could well be POM, i thought, i better check carefully in case something goes wrong. and by this time i was truly tired. i just asked to check whether the drug was POM.

then S just suddenly flared up and... the details of the conversation would not be posted here. but it really hurt, and i wonder why sometimes it was done. I believe that no one is born stupid or slow, and even if anyone is, it is cruel to pinpoint that disability of his.

I cast a face from that moment, all the way until i reached home, had my dinner, and went to sleep. True, this may be part and parcel of work life. And too bad it is coming from the boss. And maybe the boss happens just to be in a foul mood. And maybe i just happened to screw up at that critical point in time.

And maybe this is a effective, although crude, way to learn. And learn fast. I guess after a good sleep, and vowing never to repeat the same darn mistakes again, thursday and friday proceeded more smoothly. Maybe S also knew that she had overdone it, or maybe there wasn't anything for her to pick on.

And i have already done 2 out of 6 weeks. 4 more to go.

2007-06-29T08:01:00.000+08:00

Prece*torship - Day 3

First week of the P-ship was quite... well...

The place where i work is very busy, it has been likened to fighting a war. Toy soldiers, that's what we are: i take the lines from Martika's "Toy Soldiers":

(Chorus)
Step by step, heart to heart
Left, right, left, we all fall down
Like toy soldiers
Bit by bit, torn apart
We never win, but the battle wages on
For Toy soldiers

Well u get the idea. We get about 70-80 p-forms on an average day, so i guess i've already fulfilled part of what i should - learning how to key in the p-forms - by day 3. HAHA. Can't say i'm some ace in keying in, i still have a problem counting (e.g. 2/52 = multiply by factor of 14!!! 1/12 = factor of 30!!! om, on = factor of 1!! bd = factor of 2!!! and the best: requires 50mg of the pill but we only have the 100mg type: factor of 0.5!!!)

slow, slow, slow. haiz. my hands were trembling whenever i key p-forms, especially if one comes in with 10 items.

well, i have en tian (gwyneth) with me during this sojourn. so not too bad, have a companion. but not much chance to talk to her, we have separate lunch breaks, and we come in and leave at different times, about 1.5 hours apart. this is such to stagger the manpower.

other stuff we are doing like invoices, ordering, restocking goods.. pretty ok la. pretty much like what other guys do in retail. those are during the slack times.

...and my legs are sick of standing. there's only TWO chairs - one inside the phar**cy, one for the cashier - and you guessed it, none of them are for me.

up till now, haven't revised ANYTHING yet. appears like all the stuff we learn in school, are USELESS. gotta throw POM stuff to the phar*acists, P stuff we also throw to them (cos i really dunno!) and OTC stuff we can just SMOKE. like there are many instances where people ask me which one is better. All have the same ingredients, but u just gotta give an answer. The thing about this is just to look confident as possible.

sigh.

my prece*tor said something about work attitude... in life, during work, it's not how well u do in your exams or what type of honours you get. some people would not employ a first-class honours student cos they might not stay on in the company for long... as in they will go and do Masters or other studies. and some of them may not be as proficient or work-savvy as other people with lower grades.

hmm.. so there's hope for us all then?

***

200th day anniversary. hooray.

2007-06-22T14:24:00.000+08:00

Back from India

Quite an experience. But many similarities with Philippines.

Gathered enough information to kick start some stuff - can actually work out a rough timeline.
What's on the table are plans for a high school and a elementary school like installing a water purifier / filter, providing them with CDs (they already have computers) to learn English, teach the teachers there how to teach English, and painting a whole lot of walls. And others. Not confirmed yet. I'll have to work up a proposal decent enough to get approval to start the project.
Back to the present. During prece*torship, my spare time (if i still have spare time), will be split among resting, homework, doing stuff for YEP, and nuan. *sighz* a bit no life.

Everyone else is working or in prece*torship anyway... this holidays is soon coming to an end.

*sighz*. praying that prece*torship will be at least peaceful, if not good, but i'm not hoping on that.

***

Sometimes i wonder why i wanna do all this. I've given myself the answer many times already, but yet the question still pops up. Why don't i be a nice student just mug all day and strive for cap 5, instead of mucking around like this?

2007-06-14T14:16:00.000+08:00

Something i got from Leonard.

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist cihldren, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once everey 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

School of Physics, University of Sydney

2007-06-14T12:29:00.000+08:00

Issues on my mind

1. Trip to Genting. yup i know this sounds a bit selfish... but what the heck.. if you think i'm selfish, i can go and find another more selfish person out there...

Yup, finally. I've not been on one (do you count the recce in Bangalore one? YES...) decent trip in the whole of holidays. Partly cos of the ~~attachment~~ enrichment program, and partly because of the lack of $$. yup... i wonder how much my money will stretch until... it's really scary to see all your $$ going away like that...

The plan was to go sightseeing around Genting and perhaps KL, then maybe a few rounds around Johor area... Malaysian friends (particularly: Yeelian) you know i'm gonna need your help, since i'm not taking any tour packages... Need some help on the bus routes and fares... and where to eat.

I'm making only $150 this holidays... and i'm spending like 15-20 times that much. Already.

2. Trip to Bangalore and Tumkur. Yup this one is the main killer. Lots of cash thrown into it... 5 days to check out the place with jingkai, go and chuchut the locals a bit, and then have some beers in bangalore. haha...

however, all was good until yesterday, when the Indian Airlines workers had to strike. And they had to strike a good 3 days before i fly!!! wth. wth. wth. stupid~

sometimes, too much democracy is not too good. especially when you are the innocent party. like me now.

now i'm really wondering whether will i have a flight on saturday to catch. whether will there be just an empty plane on the tarmac without pilot and airline crew. like Lost. i'm like expecting flight delays - that's the least - to entire cancellations. The phone lines in the Singapore office has been cut. There is no information at all, to which flights have been delayed, or cancelled.

And God bless me if i'm caught in India without a flight.

Lesson to learn: never, NEVER, choose an airline who has had a strike two months from the day you're travelling. (Indian Airlines had a strike on May).

3. YEP. All my other resources are now poured into YEP, mostly planning. Glad to say that the structure is finally taking place, and we can at least answer some of the questions that everyone has been asking. We are going to Tumkur, Bangalore, India, in Dec 2007, and we have a rough idea of what we plan to do over there. Now it's just the negotiations, the recruitment phase.

4. Prece*torship. After i got information from an alternative source, i found out that my prece*tor wasn't too bad after all. According to the source, she "fights" for our rights. Lets see how true is that. I don't mind being very busy, at least the day passes by very fast; but there's no opporturnity to explore and learn. A bit looking forward to it. I am, however, not revising for it.

5. Secret Project 2. There's been nothing much on this thread, emails have suddenly stopped. And i won't be here watching them execute it on Sunday, that's a pity. Maybe i'll be back after Tumkur.

6. Emed. Nothing much here too, except that one brown bagging session remains, just have to take pictures for that, and present it appropriately. No more trips to SGH, please.

7. Rag Dance. I guess i'm gonna axe this, sorry eesang. Reason being: read point number #1. and secondly, there's been no activity at all. Really i wonder, is six weeks gonna be enough. And i was so stupid not to put down "Rag Dance" when i handed in my prece*torship form, and i got batch 2 as a result. Hence, better not be a part of it as well, rather than be running places after work. I am selfish. And very tired. Sorry.

8. Mum coughing. I wish i'd followed the doctor's orders and given her Dhasedyl. But she said she had problems coughing out her phlegm, so i asked for Benadryl... and she's coughing away now. Sigh.

2007-06-12T00:31:00.000+08:00

Fool

Sometimes i wonder, if is it really worth it sacrificing time, money and effort for people who don't even appreciate it..

...who take it for granted...

...who think little of it...

...who despise it.

YEP. Emed. Pharm Camp. etc...

at the cost of my own time, which i can use for many other activities.

at the cost of my own money, which is running out, and nothing is going in.

at the cost of my own effort, which is seen as worthless.

2007-06-11T23:59:00.000+08:00

Prece*torship

Like returning to army. It all seems too familiar...

People mentioned in this article are purely coincidential and do not reflect anything.... whatever.

Just received word from someone that my prece*tor is not exactly very nice. i will not go into details, as it would not be ethical.

All i can say is that, the prece*torship has been perceived to be like army... which sucks... imagine: orders instead of mutual learning... hectic place... no room for discussion or bargaining... self-study..

haiz. sometimes i wonder, why did i get such a sucky place. why didn't i change, even though it was the lousiest deal i had.

why didn't i be more thick-skinned, cook up an excuse and be less humanitarian and put Group 1 on that piece of paper, work when nuan wasn't around, and have 6 weeks to enjoy with her, instead of spending one month alone. so freaking bored. i-

i should not say any more regarding this issue here.

all the stuff that people are saying about their nice prece*tors... will it ever apply to me? will i ever even enjoy it, as what LW said? Oh man, this student here is an epileptic. what a loser... whatever he does, just give him lousy grades, since he cannot make it anyway.

haiz...

2007-06-11T23:39:00.000+08:00

Topsyturvy

what a week...

tues: the incredible lady touched down...

wed: dinner at her place... but =(

thu: went out to shop with her and her friends... bought my prece*torship clothes.. but super major quarrel with her.

fri: went for a formal apology... showed her the presents i made. touched... =')

sat: dinner for two at my house: soup with bread, Anything, Whatever, pizza, white wine... how time passes...

sun: went to bugis to get some stuff (fake gold crown). we tried some Peach Italian Soda (basically, sprite + peach flavour + syrup + alginate beads), and the new Shrek (Lime) Ice-cream from Macs. She said it tasted like the 70c ice cream with the outer lime-lolly layer and the inner milk layer. No, didn't buy any "support" (Shrek ears). She doesn't like Shrek very much.

mon: i went to wang's house for some good gaming... left feeling very shack... yeah and she invited me to her house for some of her mum's food..

tues (planned): brunch at her house with her and jialing, movie (Men in White) later in the afternoon, and Suki Sushi after that...

2007-06-07T19:49:00.001+08:00

Just Between You and Me - Lou Gramm

Staring at each other with accusing eyes
Keep our voices low, don't act surprised
If the word gets out, yeah, that's alright

I know you're just looking for some sympathy
But listen you don't know how it gets back to me
You're getting reckless, girl, but that's alright

Now don't you know that one cold word is going to lead to another
And then we'll have nowhere to go

Even if heaven and earth collide tonight
We'll be all alone in a different light
I don't care what the world can't see
It's just between you and me

I see telltale signs of a love in decline
There should be something to say, but we don't take the time
And I don't understand, but that's alright

Now you can turn the page or you can tear me apart
Don't make an open book out of my private heart
You should know better now, but that's alright

Don't you know that one cold word is going to lead to another
And then we'll have nowhere to go

Chorus:
Even if heaven and earth collide tonight
We'll be all alone in a different light
I don't care what the world can see
Because it's just between you and me

If we don't work this out we won't recover
We'll lose this soulful love for one another
But with all I've heard and all I seen
I'm still lost in your mystery

Staring at each other with accusing eyes
Keep our voices low, don't act surprised
If the word gets out, yeah, that's alright

Don't you know that one cold word is going to lead to another
And then we'll have nowhere to go

2007-06-06T00:38:00.000+08:00

The Incredible Lady Is Back!

...finally. =)

***

4:02pm.

the minutes ticked by, as the stereo blasted music right into his ears. yet he was fully conscious and aware. on his watch: he was late.

after getting off the metro at the airport station, he chanced upon the first panel showing the arrival details. shocked to see that her flight had already touched down.

immediately, he gave chase. legs of human muscle pounded down the halls of the metro station, up the escalators and to the airport shuttle waiting area.

impatiently those legs paced up and down, up and down. the furious music didn't help to calm his nerves. after what seemed an eternity, the shuttle arrived. a simple journey. but he was already behind time.

finally found his way to the arrival area. there's not a soul coming out from customs yet. whew. a bold idea crept up in his mind - he would hide behind one of the pillars and spring a surprise for her.

so he did. the minutes continued to pass by like the many people around him, transient. time and again he peeked at the luggage collecting area. no sign, no sign of her. nor her friends.

"what happened?" he asked. it's ok, there's probably a delay, as often as it happens. give them more time.

he waited until all the passengers on the plane have been at the baggage collecting area. as the baggage on the conveyor belt dwindled, to a point where there was only a few unclaimed baggage left, he still waited. and then, he still waited until those leftover baggage were gone.

4:50pm. still no sign of her. is she still angry? he thought that this might have been a cruel joke, played by some supernatural being. or a misjudgement on his side - she might be on the wrong flight.

he had checked the arrival times online the day before and there were 3 flights altogether departing from the same city. any 3 of them could be it, but he had a hunch it was the budget airline - the one scheduled to arrive at 3:45 pm.

It's already been one hour. He tried getting her on her handphone, but to no avail. Tried to confirm her flight details with her relatives, but it was pointless. Desperation was written all over his face - something clearly was not right. And if she was on this flight, and had not been out yet, even when all the baggage has been claimed, where could she be?

he racked his head for answers. maybe another flight? maybe someone did a bomb hoax and the flight is delayed and they're checking passengers one by one, body check and all? maybe something happened in Customs?

maybe.. she's still angry at me? the thought nagged constantly in his head.

5:10 pm. he gave up. he went to the other side of the airport to wait for the next flight. took the shuttle, defeated, dejected. wondering what had happened. he couldn't have been wrong about the flight details. and yet, here he was, not trusting his own judgment.

5:41pm. the second plane from the same city she was scheduled to departure from arrived. many families around the waiting area. many happy faces meeting relieved faces. many hugs.

but she wasn't there... no, it can't be this flight.. cos it's a premium airline and she's on a budget...

6:17pm. the last plane - the last hope - touched down. would she be here?

it took another eternity for passengers to begin trickling into the arrival hall. then the baggage.

no sign.

he looked around - duty free shops of liquor, perfume - no sign. no sign of her, nor her group.

just wait... i must get my answer. what exactly happened, how can 20 people suddenly vanish into thin air like that...

6:45 pm. a call. it startled him, and he put away his earphones to pick it up.

"I'm here."

2007-06-04T22:33:00.000+08:00

End of Holidays Part 2

Well well so far... it's been slack and stuff, but that's gonna come to an end soon:

A look at the events:

May 2 to May 16: Part 1 of holidays. Mainly spent with nuan dear ~ before she flies off. Still add in time-consuming things such as the leadership course at Azure, and the sickening 103 drug test. And the dengue scare.

May 16 to June 5: Part 2 of holidays. This is the real slack part:

nuan is in phil (this period corresponds with her trip there),

my dad went to china for a business trip (and came back),

my good friend wang (who is the source of my holiday gaming) went back to china to visit relatives

bingxun went overseas for a holiday

well, it was really good to like, slack around at home doing nothing and see the batch 1 people working their hats off and getting near-varicose veins from standing too much. i can imagine, yes, myself sharing a similar fate in the near future, maybe worse. the karma comes back and hit you on the back of the head.

Went to see pirates 3 with weida. that was fun ~

Mostly going to national cancer centre to and fro asking patients to sign up for the brown bagging event that we're hosting. of all the negative replies (some even hostile), i'm still glad that there's still a good population that sympathizes with the 4 of us - me, laynee, kiki, lin qun going from seat to seat and 'selling' our project. Guess we could have asked about 500 people so far.
(and we might be asking more! shucks.)

then there was the smoking cessation clinic, where miracles sometimes happen... and jingwen's birthday, where i was the MC. jampacked saturday, that was. talking someone out of smoking is almost like evangelism (Christian friends, sorry for the comparison). You've gotta ask them to abandon their religion of Smoking and join us, the brethren of Non-Smokers.

Went for FOC07 dry run and advised them on stuff too... FUN!

Oh yeah.. went through Theme Hospital and Syndicate... but quit halfway. More important things to do, such as prepare for the three projects that i have now, especially... i guess i shouldn't write it down. Haha.

June 6 to June 24: Part 3 of holidays. This is the real shack part:

Things to do:

Secret Operations (1) - to finish executing by this week
Secret Operations (2) - Initial Phase
Plan for recee trip to india, and any other YEP stuff
Brown Bagging Event, Part 1 (9th June)
More brown bagging recruitment (try to find a way to siam)
Recee trip to india (16th to 20th June)
Return and have 4 days of revision: just good enough: one for Pharm Law, one for Pharm Prac, one for Pharmaco, one for consolidation.
Celebrate birthday for Dad.
Buy clothes, must make use of the GSS. Target: John Little or any cheapo-but-good stores - i don't wanna strangle my wallet.

Yup, this is the shack phase... everything flows so fast.. so many things to do in such a short time... wonder if there'll be enough time for everything that i wanna do.

Man, i really hate being in Batch 2. Long story, don't wanna talk about it. The feeling of not getting prepared enough is horrible.

June 25 to Aug: ~~Part 4 of holidays.~~ Attachment.

No life.
Prece*torship starts, basically i'll work 5 or 6 day weeks, with sundays off.
Not much i can really do here, it's another fight to stay afloat - to know whatever drugs that the customers ask for. And do well. Heard that prece*torship is like 10-20x more difficult than studies. That is wth...

2007-05-30T00:20:00.000+08:00

Two more days to the airport....

Monday

Went with kiki to ncc to recruit people for brown bagging. We're still sorely lacking on patients... so if u guys want a FREE medication review on all your drugs for things such as expiry date, duplicated drugs, improper storage of medication, or you wish to ask pharmacist about certain drugs that you are taking but you are not very sure of what it is, you can come down! We are free at

9 June and 30 June, 1-4pm.

This service is FREE and we're not trying to sell anything...

***

hmm imagine repeating that to like, 10 or 20 people... in either english or chinese. not a lot la i know.

ok, but at least it was fruitful, i got 3 people to sign up on the post and numerous others to "call me if they wanna join". but i guess they won't, typical singaporean behaviour. most of them do not actually require the service.

Kiki went off after promoting our event to the patients there around 1pm so i went to bugis and looked around. went to many gift shops. quite annoyed with one cos they don't allow me to take pictures of their displays in the shop. ok, fine... i can make one like that anyway. sometimes they don't understand how guys shop. we recee the gifts we want first, then we zoom in after we confirm. and i recee by taking pictures, thats all...

Went also to Rochor Centre, where me shannon and pearlyn bought the stuff for FOC 06's fright night. Have to thank the girls for introducing me to this fabulous place, where u can get nice stuff for rockbottom prices.

Went to ikea later, bought some mumbo-jumbo. Details classified (yet).

Shack. Slept on the bus back...

Night: went to see the last episode of Mars vs Venus. Recorded it for nuan...

Tuesday

More ncc in the morning. But this time with lin qun. Business was bad today.

After that, lunch together and ms lin qun was kind enough to accompany me to go shopping... haha. Details of what we shopped for are classified (yet). But the company was welcome... otherwise i would have a very boring afternoon walking around the malls, and still not having any courage to buy anything. Yes, even something that cost $26 is a huge investment to me. I'm that stingy~

Having a lady around to show you the ropes does really make a difference. Especially one who knows her brands. Didn't know that this shop offers 20% discount, this shop has 50% discount, this shop offers free polishing and that doesn't... Yup, having someone to talk to while you're shopping really does make a difference. What doesn't change however, is the fact that when she shops, i would rather be somewhere else.... haha... it's a challenge for me to understand female shopping.

Yeah so really have to take my hat off to her when she agreed to accompany me to get all my stuff for the afternoon. *thanks*

After lazing around in IMM looking at (classified), i went alone to Jurong Point to look at more (classified). Decided to buy the (classified) there instead, as it is (reason classified).

Now my room is full of (classified). Oh yar! tried the "Anything" drink today. well it sorta like comes in 6 flavours, but then when i went to buy, only Jurong Point and the grocery shop downstairs my house sold the stuff.

Not very nice to drink, anyway. Hefty price tag too: it's about 10 to 20c more than the normal soft drink. But i like the commercial, lol. Singapore should have more of these funny ads rather than show Zoe Tay parade around in some cloth.

Came back, slept away the evening and now i'm blogging under a starry night.

One more week...

2007-05-28T00:45:00.001+08:00

Results

Was so shacked yesterday from jw's party, didn't even have time to check results.

And here are my results:

Huh??

Where are the results?

Hmm... guess for this sem onwards i shall not post my results anymore. But anyone of you are k-poh enough, you can come and ask me, most likely, you will feel happy afterwards, cos my results is like so shitty.

"Yay! Win another one liao, woohoo!"

All i can say is: I'm satisfied! Yar. What can u really expect? At this level, i think alot depends on what is God-given. Not christian but, the thing is, if you have the ability, you can; otherwise just forget it and accept second place. No more unreasonable demands like CAP 5.0.

I showed my results to my Mum, the first person. She took a look at the monitor screen and said, "Orh, hmm." Guess she knows too, where i stand, epilepsy and all.

There'll be people who'll be so happy cos they have excellent results. There'll be people who're crying cos they have lousy results. I guess, it's all relative. It all depends who you're comparing with (usually your friends).

But then, why bother to strain the relationship at all? It's a lose-lose situation. Among the two people comparing, one will definitely have lousier results. Jealousy and envy will then take place... which tears apart friendships...

But anyway, few things to say about the results:

LSM2101 and PR2104: could have done really better. I guess, either the paper was too easy or the subject was too easy. Or i only performed "normally".

PP2106: Woohoo. What can i say. Someone must be helping me from up above, or maybe Sheares Hall was a darn good place for exams. Clearly unexpected.

PR3107 and PR2105: for two subjects that i personally condemned, for some miracle, they turned out ok. Not fantastic, not good; but ok. Which is... good.

You give and you take. For those interested:
My scores still ranges from A- to B-;
I didn't get any B- this sem (which is probably my saving grace).
I dropped 0.02 =(, but well, given the toughness of this sem, it's quite a good result =).
My CAP is still below 4. Don't worry.

And the person who will have the privilege of full access to my grades will be my beloved nuan. =)

2007-05-28T00:10:00.000+08:00

Second weekend without nuan

Friday

Morning: went to watch Pirates 3 with Weida. Rather funny, i sorta caught the storyline on the way. However, too many twists and turns such that you don't know who is on which side. Ending is quite sad!

Afternoon: worked with yanzhang in a one-day job. Stacking chairs for a open-air programme called CLAP (Community Life Arts Programme). Basically, saw many RJC students performing Chinese orchestra, martial arts display, etc. Very cheena performance. But they were good, especially the di zi (flute) solos. Then we had some program by a band made up of two ladies, sang some songs. Basically anyone who wants to perform can just submit their application to Central CDC (Community Development Council). My role: stack chairs, give out clappers, give people survey forms. My pay: $40.

So sorry to ask lin qun to run about to acquire something for jw, which i should be the one doing.

Night: supposed to meet with judy to discuss jw's birthday, we're both emceeing. Ended up half-joking on msn instead.

Saturday

Morning: brown bagging training by emed. Felt a bit useless lei, since i dunno what i'm taking pictures for. Then i forgot to let them see my video. Quite alot of effort on that one man.. shucks.

Afternoon: went for David Woo's Smoking Cessation event in Bedok. Felt quite important at the start, esp after they finished briefing us on how to test them on the carbon monoxide meter, but slacked. Woozie is also quite crazy to like ask us (me and choon han) to go outside the tent where it is HOT and MORE HOT, to attract smokers to come into the tent where we were to quit smoking. Most of them were like, "I don't smoke." Er. This is different from giving flyers, man. And poor choon han was sick, still tell him to walk under the sun.

Then afterwards slacked in the coolness of the tent, cos i think they dragged too many student helpers here and then there wasn't much to do, so i helped the temp staff there usher in the people who wanna quit smoking ("quitters"). Most of the "quitters" were quite friendly. Really salute the people outside trying to identify the smokers, and drag them in though. Must have taken alot of persuasion technique, which i suck at. In the end, didn't learn much though cos i was mostly ushering, not listening to pharmacists counselling the patient.

Night: Jw's birthday party, i'm the emcee/host. Quite alot of people came, i guess should number about 80 - family, pharmers, dancers from everywhere, JC friends etc. Shouted until tired, no choice but to let poor Judy take over sometimes. Really, we should have gotten mikes. But the place was nice. Bookmark it man next time for nuan. What i can describe is a restaurant in the middle of a stagnant lake, surrounded by bottle-shaped trees. Guess jw muz have prep a good lot for this birthday party, imagine, food, games, lucky draw...

Congratulations girl. you're 21.

Sunday

Woke up late (12noon) to find out that the FOC 07's dry run has already begun. Rushed over to Changi Village. Helped them with some of the games and FN. Details are classified...

It's good to see that there are still a bunch of juniors that are willing to take up this project. Really felt different playing and testing the games with them cos when it was FOC 06, what i saw were only names. Hearing those names being called, and placing name to face, really completes the whole picture. Plus, last year i hardly had an opportunity to actually play with the juniors. Sometimes i hear them talk about the fun that they had when they were playing last year, and i feel very good. I guess these things go on, even after the event has been long over. People may not remember the person in charge of it, but... i guess personal recognition is not important anymore... i guess i've helped propagate the ideas of fun in these young hearts, passing the stuff from the last batch to them, and i think that is reward enough.

Oh yar, tiongphew was there too. Wonder what was he there for... haha.
(xiuting and kelvin lai were there too. =) )

2007-05-25T22:53:00.000+08:00

21st birthday

Warning: mushiness.

After tonight, the girl whom i love very much will no longer be a girl, you see she has turned 21.

Maturation. Legally, an adult.

It's good to see her reaching adulthood. Firstly, it means that she will become self-sufficient soon, very soon (probably next year of the year after next). And hence she can provide for herself and have spending power. And make decisions.

Secondly, i hope she has more intelligence now, don't act the unsuspecting victim and get cheated so often. I know she has a heart of pure 24K gold, which many people are waiting to get their hands on. So must be more smarter.

Thirdly, i hope she can continue to broaden her horizons and acquire more knowledge, such that she becomes a wiser person in all. After all, knowledge is wisdom. Never hurts to have a little more knowledge.

But too bad now, she's in Philippines now for a good cause. Probably staying with a host family, may be rich enough to lavish on her a 10-course dinner, or poor enough just to afford a slice of cake with a single candle, or not even at all. I hope she's happy and smiling =) as she counts down the minutes to her birthday.

It's her project, a project that has taken much time and effort on her side, and i guess, the best birthday present now will be to see the fruits of her labour.

Nuanxin dear, I love you... enjoy your 21st birthday =)

2007-05-25T22:26:00.000+08:00

Would you be there

1. If I were blue, would you be there for me,
And whisper in my ears instead.
Would you stand by me, let me hold you tight,
And say you love me one more time.

2. If I feel good, will you slow dance with me
And touch my lips with tender loving care.
Would you die for me, would you run with me,
And never look back..

*Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?

*Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?
Would you be there..

3. If I'm away, would you still think of me,
And wish that you could call me now (call me now)
Would you die for me, would you run with me,
All the way…

*Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?

**Would you be there to save my soul tonight?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be there,
to kiss my pain away?

(mod +1)

*Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?

**Would you be there to save my soul tonight?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be there,
to kiss my pain away?

Would you be there…

2007-05-25T01:16:00.000+08:00

Botrytis what?

Searched for some topics about wine and came to this page on wikipedia. You know, alot of hyperlinks everywhere, so i just clicked at whim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botrytis_cinerea

An extract from the article:

***

Botrytis cinerea is a fungus that affects many plant species, although its most notable hosts may be wine grapes. In viticulture, it is commonly known as botrytis bunch rot; in horticulture, it is usually called grey mould or gray mold. The fungus gives rise to two different kinds of infections on grapes. The first, grey rot, is the result of consistently wet or humid conditions, and typically results in the loss of the affected bunches. The second, noble rot, occurs when drier conditions follow wetter, and can result in distinctive sweet dessert wines, such as Sauternes or the Aszú of Tokaj. The species name Botrytis cinerea is derived from the Latin for "grapes like ashes"; although poetic, the "grapes" disappointingly refers to the bunching of the fungal spores on their conidiophores, and "ashes" just refers to the greyish colour of the spores en masse. The fungus is usually referred to by its anamorph (asexual form) name, because the sexual phase is rarely observed. The teleomorph (sexual form) is an ascomycete, Botryotinia fuckeliana (see taxonomy box).

It is also an allergen.

***

Hmm did u guys see it??? Lets have a closer look:

***

The fungus is usually referred to by its anamorph (asexual form) name, because the sexual phase is rarely observed. The teleomorph (sexual form) is an ascomycete, Botryotinia fuckeliana (see taxonomy box).

***

Scenario 1:

Reporter at botany forum: "So, Professor XXX, what do you think is the possible cause for the sexual reproduction of the fungus Botrytis cinerea?"

"Hmm, the B. cinerea fungus reproduces... blah blah blah... and its sexual form has the name (looks down at his notes) WHAT???? Er..."

Reporter: "So the sexual form has the name..."

Next day newspapers: PROFESSOR SWEARS IN PUBLIC

Scenario 2:

Female researcher: Hey we've got a new species of Botrytis in the lab. Very excited to go look at it..

Male researcher: Hmm, so after we look at this, can u go and have dinner and a movie with me...

Female researcher: ...and this new species is called B. f*ckeliana!

Male researcher: (gulps)... er... what did u say? Did u say we can....

***

U get the idea.

Why do some scientists name funguses with such names? Poor fungus, it must have contaminated the wrong petri dish. But sounds suitable, since it must have referred to the sexual phase. Maybe the guy who named it was thinking of something sexual at the point.

Haha... just for laughs.

2007-05-23T00:54:00.000+08:00

Quad erat demonstratum

Still pissed for the good part of the day. Wondering whether to go for jianwei's FOCC briefing.

Was feeling very sleepy and every muscle told me not to step out of the house. But i did.

It was good.

Shared many things with the Programmers and made me feel, finally, someone understands all the shit that i've been through.

Everyone has their own fair share of problems.

It was fun sharing all the methods that i thought that would never get out of the drawing board in my head.

For this, it's worth the while.

2007-05-22T12:41:00.001+08:00

Depressed

(very strong vulgarities.)

Why the hell should i atone for someone's mistakes again? Getting forced into circumstances and situations which i do not wish to be in the first place?

This holidays is a piece of shit.

Where's the time i promised myself?

Where's the time for me to relax?

I AM NOT YOUR ERRAND BOY. SHAME ON YOU IF U FREAKING TREAT ME AS ONE, WHEN I TREAT YOU OTHERWISE.

Forced into unwilling, unforseen circumstances, without support at all

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS HOLIDAY SUPPOSED TO BE!!!

Why some people can work it off for the three months, get super good f*cking pays outside and then live their lap of luxury, and i have to clear up the shit for them???

A**holes.

Who doesn't want to relax? I'm not God. I'm nothing but a freaking human. I need time to get happy again. I need love. Need happiness.

I don't need extra shit from people who so willingly defecated it into my hands with so much of a smile and then f*cking walk away like I'M SUPPOSED, BY GOD, TO CLEAR UP HIS BUSINESS.

F- U. I f-ing hate u all. Don't come next time with that smile please. I'm sick of it.

2007-05-22T00:37:00.000+08:00

Robbed of momentum

Why am i doing this?

Trading in precious holiday time, friends and family for stubborn pride of mine. That stubborn will. Which got me to where i am.

Ten tasks.

ALL VOLUNTARY.

Why don't i just throw in the towel and use this period to work like some people? Earn extra cash for whatever reason?

I can don't help jianwei with FOCC. I can screw the smoking cessation clinic by Mr. Woo. Why bother, since it's directed at the batch 1 people?
I can don't care so much about the emed events. Nor join emed as a Publicity Head almost one year ago. Nor prepare so much for a birthday party. I can totally heck care the brown bagging sessions, giving some lame reasons like i got work. I can don't do the brown bagging video saying my computer spoilt.

I can don't even need to go for YEP, once was good enough. I don't even have to lead, and spend a fortune pre-trip. Maybe the YEP i went, wasn't even necessary. I can save the money for whatever purpose.

I can totally screw the pharm rag preparations. Why was i so big-mouth to volunteer to dance again this year? wasn't once already so shitty?

I can totally just study, study, study, study and study and pray i'll get CAP 5. I can only have four functions: study, eat, sleep, shit.

Constance is right. why am i spending precious time in all these events. When i need a rest, the next rest stop is after Sem 6. After 24th Jun, the only time i have for rest is - one year later. by then i'll probably have screwed all the year 3 modules cos i didn't get enough rest. Who have i to blame?

MYSELF.

My goddamned self.

Why do i try so hard in live for? Maybe i shouldn't even have survived the operation when i was 15 years old.

Darned.

"Want to be a goddamn hero izzit?" Heroes die for nothing or stupid causes. Do you wanna die for nothing or stupid causes?

2007-05-22T00:08:00.000+08:00

Would you be there?

If I were blue, would you be there for me,
And whisper in my ears instead.
Would you stand by me, let me hold you tight,
And say you love me one more time.

If I'm away, would you still think of me,
And wish that you could call me now.
Would you die for me, would you run with me,
And never look back..

Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?

Would you be there to love, to be with me?
Would you swear that your love is always true?
Would you say that you'll always be the one,
to take my breath away?

Would you be there..

From the ending song of "Mars vs Venus", showing on Channel 8, May 2007.

*sobs*

2007-05-20T22:13:00.000+08:00

Lonely Sunday

Today was good. Played only 2.5 hours of Theme Hospital. Trying to refrain from playing Syndicate later but i think will still succumb. Ha.

Rest of the day i have a strange feeling that i'm not myself. Tachycardia, weird sense of smell, feeling sweaty and stuff. Took a bath at 3pm, then sat down to complete some song of mine.

I need to get my life back, man. After exams, it was nuan - all the way. Until she left for philippines. After nuan - i gotta think about it. Maybe this was the result of poor pre-holiday planning. I know i've got a zillion things to do, but i dunno what.

Maybe it's because the lack of FOCC. Last year i was probably furiously typing out FOCC programme documents and manuals whom no one in the end read anyway. Typed from day to night. I could type way into the night, like 2-3am then toss and tussle in the bed for like 1-2h, fall asleep at 4am cos i was too excited about all the "grandiose" plans inside my head waiting impatiently to be written; then once i woke up, immediately turned on the computer and resumed typing.

Now. What should i do? In order of appearance in my head:

1) Help jianwei with FOCC
2) Smoking cessation clinic by Mr. Woo. Get formal dress. Coincides with:
3) Jingwen's birthday party. Which coincides with:
4) Emed training session - get the faci stuff ready. Which reminds me of:
5) (Classified)
6) Ops Keyhole (Classified)
7) Emed brown bagging at NCC. June 9, June 30. Be there with the cam.
8) Video for brown bagging. to be done by May 26
9) YEP preparation
10) Eesang's Pharm Rag dance. So far, no news yet. Wonder what's going on...

Maybe i shouldn't be playing Theme Hospital anymore.

2007-05-19T17:52:00.000+08:00

Updates of the week

Day 2 (Thursday) - 17/5/07

Starting to recover. Feeling of recovered from the illness in the morning. Made even better when i saw her sms ~ she had already reached Philippines. And she was not very angry at me... which is good. =)

Gave me a new will to get better. And to mend the relationship when she gets back.

Slacked and slept all the way in the afternoon. Still groggy.

In the evening saw another nice present from meiqi: Theme Hospital! Think i played this during Primary 4 to secondary school days when time was aplenty. And i'm sure alot of you played it before. Perhaps, this is what made the medical profession so enticing. Haha..

Chionged the first three levels but got stuck on the fourth. Spent a whole two hours on the comp.. until Mars vs Venus came on tv at 9pm and i went to watch. When it first debuted i rated it as a show of extremes.. after all all Channel 8 love dramas are so-so. All TV love dramas are so-so. After i've watched it with nuan, maybe not.. haha. It's her favourite show btw. Smsed nuan a brief sypnosis of the episode after the show.

Dad and Mum went down with fever and headaches. Mum more affected cos she had already been suffering from cough. Was starting to think that the flu i caught could be a damn virulent strain. And damn hard to kill. Can't say whether it was from nuan, or whether i had caught some horrible disease from Batam (cos bingxun also had the same symptoms). But it's quite horrible.

Cos of this, we missed Mum's birthday.

At night, went to get the game Syndicate from the net. 1993 game, very old-fashioned cyborg world shooting. But well. I last played it 10 years ago, when i was like 8 years old! What do you expect!

Day 3 (Friday) - 16/5/07

Morning - Theme Hospital.

Afternoon - Syndicate.

Mum's condition worsened and she came back from work in the morning to rest. When opening the door for her to come back i saw a leaflet stuck in the gate which says that there has been a suspected dengue outbreak in the vicinity and that we were to open our doors to a Health Inspector or sorts to scrutiny. !!!

More dengue warnings. Firstly, bingxun said that we might have contracted dengue from Batam, dunno why he said that though. Then visited the doc and he diagnosed it to be "viral fever". i thought it was influenza (well that's what i learnt). He also suggested that it could be dengue fever. Then the notice.

Then later in the night came one auntie who distributed leaflets and pamphlets on how to control dengue.

What the...

Sister also came down with fever today. Everyone's getting sick. =(

Saw the episode of Mars vs Venus as usual on 9pm.

2007-05-16T22:00:00.000+08:00

Day 0 (Night)

Woke up with more headaches, neck pain, feeling of malaise...

Fed porridge by mum. But can't even get half of it down. No appetite.

Water-paraded too. Also drank some Chinese medicinal drinks like ling yang (antelope's horn) which promises to bring down the fever.

Alternating between chills and hot breaks..

Eventually i puked. It was after i had drank so much water, that my stomach couldn't take it anymore. I guess, somewhere, the whole digestive system was stuck (constipating since Tuesday). So nothing could go down, instead, everything went up and out..

Was it 6 or 7 times? It wasn't a good feeling, especially the sour taste of the food in the stomach, and the squeezing of the abdominal muscles together. Made me feel extremely tired.

Torture...

I wish you would be by my side now...

2007-05-16T16:20:00.000+08:00

Day 0 (Afternoon)

Turbulent dreams. Headache.

Woke up in a chill... i keep the blanket on.. it gets hotter... i keep the blanket off.. i start to shiver...

Can't even walk in the first place.. having tachycardia, with very weak limbs... Could not even muster enough energy to visit the toilet.

Coughed out thick, green sputum.

Is this punishment?

Smsed kiki about emed... it's a pity that i can't help out as promised because i'm sick. Glad she's very understanding.

Thinking about you..

2007-05-16T11:00:00.000+08:00

Day 0 (Morning)

Went to CA, woke up at 6am.

Everything feels so familiar - the long train trip to TM MRT station, the switching of trains. Only thing i wasn't lugging any luggage..

No courage, so had to observe from afar.

Waited.

Every minute felt like an hour, every second a minute, a testament that i did wrong...

What's happening?

Now that we can talk, we are separated by borders...

The last sms i sent, did not have a reply.

When will i see you again?

I pray for your safety and success for the project...

2007-05-15T23:59:00.000+08:00

Day -1

Sick. While finishing up the gift... i felt myself getting hotter.

The virus has done a good job of infiltration - by 5pm i was already a wreck.

Mum was sick too - but she accompanied me along. Both of us, coughing along the way.

Bad mood. Exacerbated by waiting a painful 1 hours plus for the doctor. Could even tell what drugs he was giving me - Panadol 2 tab q6-q8h, Dhasedyl 10 ml tds, Lozenges 1 prn, Amoxycillin 250mg tds.

Hungry. Only had one coffee during the day, nothing else at all.

Didn't take the first step in smsing.

Why?

I shouldn't have done so...

2007-05-14T23:59:00.000+08:00

Day -2

Major quarrel.

Why?

Things just happened so fast...

I know its my fault... why am i so stubborn?

2007-05-11T02:14:00.000+08:00

Worrying about next sem: YEP

Yup, it's me at the worrying end of matters again.

YEP. The three letters that i've been preaching over and over since last year... since i came back from phil. It's due to times like this when you really enjoy something, then wish you had it back again.

Yes. so that's why i'm here again this time round. I can't go back now... the costs are much too great. Imagine.. $600 for the leadership course, $800 for the recee.. close to $1000-$1500 for the actual trip = $2.4-$3 k. a small fortune, if you ask me...

Sometimes it's issues like this which really force u to think about what you really want. Why do i want this YEP? Why do i wanna park it under pharm? Even though like, not many people are really lifting a finger to help. The usual reasons surface: not enough time, increasing workload, etc... well i would really write a whole essay here.. but forget it.

Can't really help it. I admit that i went for the phil trip cos partially, i wanted to see the Philippines... as a form of leisure. But then i was pretty able to stay committed. But at a great cost - skipping lessons, tutorials, getting stuff done the day before a test, having late-night meetings up to 8pm etc. Overall result: lousiest CAP of all 4 sems.

So why do i wanna put in so much effort even though i risk sacrificing my grades (expected CAP: 3.0 next sem) and friends, and most importantly of all, nuan? Beats me... maybe i'm an idealist. Maybe i just wanna more people to experience the goodness that i have similarly experienced. I really think YEP is another milestone.. after all i met nuan there, and it gave me a leadership role... which i have not really fulfilled to my expectations. It introduced a whole new world out there, and gave me infinite hope, that the world is big, and that maybe i needed not be cooped up in Singapore doing volunteering or whatever else i wanna do... It is a good experience. I enjoy the bonding with the 18 or so people on a team.. working together, living together, developing chemistry and cliques, laughing like old friends. Guess other than the pharm people, the closest friends now i have are the friends from the trip.

And it is my hope that pharmacy has a YEP trip. We have good and intelligent people, we are kind by nature (i hope, after all, why did you join pharm??). And there's always the bugging concern, "why other faculties and societies have YEP, why don't you all have it??" It's also truly a joy to be working with the leader of the previous YEP trips, jk. i think we'll be counting on his experience. Sorta marks the continuation of the YEP trips.. i hope really, if this hits off.. then somebody will at least continue the journey. I don't wanna say too much else here...

Right now: no plans. But they will come soon. Recceing the ground in around mid-june, hopefully i and jk can bring some good nuggets of info back (and avoid diarrhoea in the process). Like all YEP leaders.. i hope the trip can be even more successful than the one that i experienced, such to provide the participants with an excellent and enjoyable experience, so that eventually one of them will accept the torch and carry on the tradition...

2007-05-11T01:32:00.000+08:00

Operation Quinceanera (keen-say-ah-NYAIR-ah)

This is it... the biggest event of the sem (for me) since april... haha

Ever since nuan said she would not be celebrating her twenty-first birthday... i promised not to let that happen...

http://www.quinceanera-boutique.com/quinceaneratradition.htm

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/dpalfrey/dpquince.html

2007-05-10T14:23:00.000+08:00

GSK visit

Went to the GSK site at Jurong yesterday. Nice place, great site for Half-Life: Pharmaceutical Plant.

No cameras or whadever allowed so i guess there muz be some commercial secrets going inside there. Shall not go into details, then. After all, it might become my rice bowl.

The place was in this area of Jurong - you know the "reclaimed land" part of West Side with all those industrial areas, lousy air and uniformed workers. We were given a talk by one of our seniors and it was interesting to know that another person got into pharmacy cos he was surprised how drugs can save lives~.. haha... and all the stuff about if his drug was adulterated or not manufactured properly then. Quite interesting.

The pharmacists we were shown to were quite nice, sharing with us their stories and feelings about the company and the plant. Think the whole visit was quite interesting and heartwarming.
Then we went on a group tour. Can't reveal much but this plant appears to manufacture the powders, i.e. from the raw materials such as alcohol, etc to the drug powder that pharmacists use to make into the various dosage forms. Very interesting. It also means that most of the stuff the guide (which we suspected was a chemical engineer) was saying didn't make much sense to us, although with our limited knowledge of Dosage Form Design we barely managed to grasp some of it.

Gigantic mixers and a hell lotta pipes, valves with all the labels dangled from here and there, creating a vastly complex network. Just imagine what reactions would be going on in these pipes. Reminded me of the time i played Half-life, where objective was to turn valves, activate panels, balance along pipes, get flushed down huge reaction vessels, drains, sewers, etc. So fun!
Except that it doesn't have monsters, aliens or headcrabs, no shotguns, mp5s, rocket launchers, etc. A really nice place, really.

2007-05-10T01:21:00.000+08:00

Dare of Truth

Rule of the game:-
Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things or habits or little known facts about yourself.
People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own 10 weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly.
At the end you must choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. No tagbacks!

1. Scared of cockroaches.

2. Plays air guitar, air keyboard, air drums... in an MRT. with a mp3 player. with all the ppl looking at me.

3. Has epilepsy. (If you haven't already known). On 5 pills every day.

4. Attended an anger-management course. Became much calmer with myself. Has a very short fuse but luckily CO2 extinguisher at hand for standby.

5. Suffered from depression. (It seems more and more people kena that these days)

6. Hates being lonely. Really. Easily bored too. ACCOMPANY ME!

7. Squeezes pimples, even now. moh peng kia.

8. Miserly. (remember, low upkeep, if not no unkeep). Nuan's the exception.

9. Bottomless pit ("Mummy always said that the people of Africa always starve, so finish up every part of the food")

10. Harbours dream of being a rock star, a successful composer (Till now, i haven't composed one song) and probably shoot my own MTV (see right column). Yar everything except being a pharmacist. Haha.

OK, lets shoot this back to:
1) jw
2) shannon
3) mayi
4) xinyi
5) cons
6) yeelian

=p

2007-05-10T01:13:00.000+08:00

Interesting Books

Here's a book i saw when i was out with nuan doing window shopping.

To pharmers: it might be a familiar author! Wow! Didn't know she wrote Tibetian stories...

You may wanna have a look at it: it's at one of the bookstores at West Mall (Level 4). Have fun!

2007-05-04T12:54:00.000+08:00

Naming Game - 8 conditions to choose your ze ou
(i guess is boyfriend??)

(from shannon.)

點名遊戲 ※擇偶的八個條件

點名遊戲※擇偶的八個條件
1. 必須著名你的伴侶是男或女。
2. 必須點名八個人與你一起玩遊戲並到對方留言版說：　『恭喜你被點名-擇偶八個條件，請到我的ｂｌｏｇ觀看遊戲內容！』
3. 如果被點名者，已經完成這個遊戲，但又被點到，可不用再ｐｏ一次。

***
Rules:
1. Must state whether your partner is a guy or girl.
2. Must tag 8 other people to play this game and go to their tagboard and say: "Congrats you've been tagged to play this game, please come to my blog for details!"
3. If you have been tagged a second time, you do not require to play this game again.

***

OK my ze ou is a girl. haha.

1. muz be caring, and have a kind heart.
2. muz be there for me, and i be there for her, and don't make me lonely
3. muz be able to talk to me, so that i can shut up and listen to her.
4. should have a open mind and accept new ideas and changes.
5. should be open to discussion during arguments.
6. should not be jie pi (cleanliness freak)
7. should know right from wrong
8. should care for past and future generations.

ok. i shall not elaborate.

***

eh whats the use of this?? shannon u sabo me la. walao. later my gf see liao then whack me sia.

ok the 8 ppl i shall sabo are
1. nuan
2. labbie
3. jw
4. bx (although u dun have blog, but it's ok, can still do somewhere ahha)
5. cons and yl (counted as one!)
6. benny
7. edwin - aha bet u haven't been arrowed. MUST DO ok!
8. the next poor sob who happens to see this

2007-05-04T12:38:00.000+08:00

High

*** This song saved my sanity. ***

When you're close to tears, remember
Some day, it'll all be over
One day we're gonna get
So High...

Though it's darker than December
what's ahead is a different color
One day we're gonna get
So High...

And that
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We were close to the end
And we wonder, how we made it through the night
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We stayed so close to the end
And we remember
It was me and you...

So we are gonna be
Forever you and me, you'll...
Always keep it
Flying high in the sky of
Love

Don't you think it's time you started
Doing, what we always wanted
One day we're gonna get
So High...

Cos even the impossible
Is easy
When we've got each other
One day we're gonna get
So High...

And that
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We were close to the end
And we wonder, how we made it through the night
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We stayed so close to the end
And we remember
It was me and you...

Cos we are gonna be
Forever you and me, you'll...
Always keep it
Flying high in the sky of
Love

We are gonna be
Forever you and me, you'll...
Always keep it
Flying high in the sky of
Love

High
High~
High-
High.
High
High~
High-
High.

And then
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We were close to the end
And we wonder, how we made it through the night
At the end of the day
Remember the ways
We stayed so close to the end
And we remember
It was me and you

(Repeat 2x)
Cos we are gonna be
Forever you and me, you'll...
Always keep it
Flying high in the sky of
Love

2007-05-04T12:22:00.000+08:00

Post-exam evaluation

Hmm, i think my results will be as such:

PR2104: good. i hope. B+
PR2105: sucks. C+
PP2106: sucks. B- C+
LSM2101: hopefully good enough. B+
PR3107. sucks. C+

Which leaves me with the estimated cap of...
4 (2) + 2.5 (3) = 15.5.
Mean cap = 3.1 ??? oh shit. haha

okok... lets be a bit more realistic

PR2104: good. i hope. B+
PR2105:~~sucks~~ not so sucky i hope. C+ B-
PP2106: sucks. B- C+ not so sucky i hope. B-
LSM2101: hopefully good enough. B+
PR3107. ~~sucks~~ not so sucky i hope. C+ B-

OK, that leaves me a cap of:
4(2) + 3 (3) = 17
Mean cap = 3.4??? still shitty. haha.

ok la maybe i shouldn't hope for too much. after what a screwed up timetable i've got. and the huge amount of memo work which i suck at absolutely (a-level bio is nothing, nothing, nothing, compared to this. not to mention o-level bio.)

Jiang ji jiu ji. maybe i'll just be a small-time pharmacist drawing like $3k from the kitty with hopes of promotion to $3.5k when i retire. Shucks.

Next sem, the fight is on.

But i seem to lose the faith...

2007-05-04T12:04:00.000+08:00

It's over!!!

Yar u guys may be wondering why i'm saying this one day late. Cos she just ended her exams today.. and it's not over until hers is over too...

It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over It's over

Woah.

I think sem 2 is terrible, as much stress as the previous 3 sems put together. Since mid-sem break i've been increasingly limiting myself to less games, less time with gf, less pleasures of life. Even less emed. And most importantly - less time with friends. (Alot of time to bridge and slacking though.)
All directed to this process called WORK.

Peon: "werk werk ~"

Anyway, after the LSM lecturer (i-forgot-his-name-the-one-who-likes-the-urea-song-so-much) said "you can leave now" it turned out to be the best four words i have ever heard. its like all the work that you did in sem 4, just flushed down the toilet, going to the sewage plant to be processed, and what of the result you can just find out 1.5 mths later at the sewage treatment plant (ok it's a bit gross here).

The tension. the excitement. the high stakes. the bleargh of not doing well. The long sigh of relief that finally allowed my sympathetic system to rest, it has been overworking for the past three weeks since Reading.

Easy breezy.

I yearn for the thought of relaxing at east coast beach, a faraway place of serenity and wonder, where during the exam period, everything seems to be such a faraway distant dream. Let the sea breeze waft through your hair, enter your parched lungs, revitalizing you, regenerating your soul. Orchard road seems so distant now, the high-rise buildings of Cineleisure and the long street that snakes from Taka to Marina... (wham)

(falls back to earth) oh shoot, have to go and work there in 4-5 weeks time. better not think too much about it.

Tasks to do now:
1) Emed: Brown Bagging at NCC - Event publicity
2) Operation Quinceanera - planning
3) YEP trip to india - planning (yes it is on. hell it is on, there is my investment in it, it better be on!!!)
4) YEP trip training
5) Rag dance

enjoy, folks.

2007-04-29T23:40:00.000+08:00

Acceptance

phases of grief: Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance, Hope.

Thanks cons and bx for the nice messages that keep me going on.

I really like what bx said. Adopt a heck-care attitude. We're all gonna be screwed. So why worry so much?

I now look forward to May 2nd, where a good rest awaits me. And probably some R&R as well.

Who cares about the stupid exams? About CAP? About doing well, better than others?

I really don't care so much now. Finally the red haze has been lifted.

I am going in there, try my best, and walk away, knowing that i could not have done better.

=)

2007-04-29T20:35:00.000+08:00

Strategy

Sun: finished carbo, touched some of david woo's skin notes. i'm not memorizing much - he has too much detail.

will try to finish fats tonight if possible (hopefully)

Mon: Full force on LSM, proteins and nucleic acids.

Tues: Everything else on pharm prac + a little lsm.

Wed morning: pharm prac.

The message that never came.

Agony.

Wed, 2hour break: LSM. Recap only.

Thanks cons.

***

"When you're close to tears remember,
some day, it'll all be over
One day we're gonna get,
so, high....."

2007-04-29T15:24:00.000+08:00

Make Me Happy

For depression to hit me on my last lag of the journey, it is certainly unthinkable. Procrastination perhaps, but never depression.

Everything is just not going in. Maybe it's exasperation.

oxphos -
tca cycle - d/h, argh i cant spew out a single shit.

there is no one to turn to. i think i will screw up all 12 questions for pharm prac and then screw up all the other 5 questions for lsm. then that will make me the lowest record ever, haha.

after every chapter i feel so tired. and i'm NOT finished glucose yet.

my head just feels so hot. this comes every two hours, or after every lecture. energy is all gone.

I think, i will just weep after the pharm prac. Then weep again after lsm. all alone.

Relax.

Water parade is good. It's something good to drown the sorrows in. Then u piss those troubles away. BUt they just keep comin~

I need Xanax. yet i can't sleep, time's running out.

2007-04-29T13:08:00.000+08:00

Anger

Vulgaritiy-laden and angst-filled.
Warning: please skip if u do not wish to be offended.

***

Behind target now. I haven't even finished carbo notes and i'm only 1/4 in my pp notes.

And i can't remember anything at all. Fuck. I've never felt so screwed up before.

Everytime i despair, i wonder why those assholes who set the exam dates set two papers, both requiring u to memorize, on the same day, 2 hours apart. no brainers. Maybe it's because of a screwup between Pharm and Medicine. maybe they don't like each other, whatever. We have to bear the brunt of it, we being Batch 2 pharm students.

Defeated on both flanks. How screwed up is that.
With half the time to study for pharm practice - we get screwed by batch 1 people.
Pitched against people with strong lsm knowledge and have been studying lsm for their whole uni life - we get screwed by them.

This is not a fair match. It never was, anyway.

I wonder why do we even try in the first place. Was there a quote by some smartass, "never fight a battle you can't win?"

I feel so sorry for the nursing students which i had laughed at in an earlier post. Seems like the karma is coming back now.

My only consolation is that i will be able to screw all the books and notes once this exam is over and rest in peace, literally.

I think for this sem, it will be a tough fight to even get a cap of 3.5, judging by the useless performance i put up before and the even more pathetic performance i'm gonna put up. Gonna pull down the cap by like 0.1 overall, which may not seem much, but it's extremely hard to get back to 3.8. There goes the FYP. didn't expect it to be so fast. Maybe there goes the second lower as well. I wonder if i'm still gonna lead the YEP next sem, to lead a bunch of people who... never mind. Some things are better left unsaid. I know i'm stupid and incapable, a piece of shit who deserves something like "oh, really? you have epilepsy? oh my god... i hope it's not too serious."

Assholes. Stress is piling up, it's making the whole process even difficult. And no-one cares. Not even one single person in the damned admin is gonna care, not even one single person is gonna say "oh sorry". They've done it countless times, there are people who took two papers in one day and got away with smiles.

You will see me get away in an ambulance. Damn it.

***

sorry i'm not in the most understanding of moods, nor the most diplomatic of moods.

let me hide in my cave. period.

2007-04-28T23:25:00.000+08:00

Fear

Really losing focus and determination for the final battle on 2nd May.

There's around fifty chapters to memorise, twenty from pharm prac and thirty from LSM.

I have four days (i wasted one day today already doing 5 chapters and the remaining of friday slacking). So i must at least do 10 chapters.

SIGHHHHHHHHHH

i'm wondering if i will ever get my first epileptic seizure. For sure.

The period from 3pm to 5pm will be crucial. i can either choose:
1) to mug: that will have a 70-80% chance of getting a seizure
2) to rest: that will screw the LSM

i dun wanna screw LSM. i got a good grade for the class test II (u can check it out yourselves). Well guess i excel at mcqs. The final format is 5 structured questions, 20 mcqs, which means i'm screwed.

The final format for pharm prac is 12 structured questions, average of 10min for each. A total of 17 structured questions in total.

I think the pharm anal paper was still the best. I hate to write, especially when i'm experiencing tachycardia and tremor and my hands are shaking and my writing is like chicken scratches. Illegible.

Yet, for LSM, i'm gonna get trashed by the China students in LSM, the zai kia in LSM, and by my own brethren. i really feel like taking MC for the paper.

But no, the doctor won't accept my excuse. Obviously i'm trying to chao keng. After all the doc has probably memoed like hundreds of chapters for a single test before and this is "nothing" to him. Yar, and there are doctors who have epilepsy.

Fine. Let me go in and die, like a man then.

2007-04-28T23:16:00.000+08:00

Disyllabic replies

You know a woman's pissed when she replies everything in two syllables or words to your questions.

OK, maybe, when a woman's real pissed, she won't reply at all. But i won't let that happen. But how.

But with what, it is extremely hard to tell.

Tell me please dear...

2007-04-28T10:59:00.000+08:00

Pre- post-exam thoughts

For 18 hours i've been doing nothing (ok, spent about half the time sleeping and watching tv), chatting on the comp, doing youtube.

Other thing on my mind is Operation Quinceinera (classified). It's always like that during Sem 2.. i end up thinking of so much ideas for the holidays that i completely screw up my studies. And the last paper often bears the brunt of it. Was like this during last year, was just generating ideas for the FOCC camp that i sometimes just can't sleep a wink because ideas keep rushing through my mind, like at 4 a.m., and it isn't about the module that i'm gonna take later at 1 p. m. i have to coax myself to sleep, but can't sleep. tortorous days those were. programs didn't do as well as i expected, don't wanna talk much about it.

Things i'm gonna do during hols
1. Operation Quinceinera
2. Preceptorship
3. Emed BB event
4. David woo's event
5. Course for...

argh why am i writing this now. study. sien. bye.

2007-04-27T20:41:00.000+08:00

more stuff from the blog.

call me a voyeur if you wish... i prefer to call myself a bored person who won't touch his pharm prac.

read more of the blog - quite interesting. here's another entry:

http://sharkalodoon.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

"i found the love of my life ! this year two pharmacy girl (:(: she's so pretty pretty. well, not quite conventionally pretty but i just tnk she looks damn cute. spent most of the free time in btn lectures ogling her ! ahh i want to die. i want to go for pharmaco lectures more often so i can ogle her ! yes, wu zun, STEP ASIDE. but sian, i dont even know whats her name."

omg. wonder who this is, i mean the girl she was looking at...?

if you want me to take this entry down, please notify me.

2007-04-27T19:49:00.000+08:00

How i Died For MicroB

it's simple: i didn't study enough - too much on the surface, and ma soul wasn't in sync anyway from day one. sigh.

shucks. really can't click with the subject. keep screwing up the practical, and everything they say in the lecture is so dry, it's just like pharmaco, only thing this is so boring i dunno how to memorize.

Then, the notes are so brief. I think the idea is to go and research on it, or depend on whatever the lecturer said (which a great deal came out during MCQ). Detail again.

Finally, the questions are difficult - mcqs was easy, but people spotted the wrong questions, the people includes me. Didn't expect bacterial spores to come out; had the cannons fully pointed at fungal spores. Forgot about the process of sporogenesis. Also one thing was questions that required on-the-spot thinking. Like "name 5 differences between bacterial and fungal spores." i really hate racking my brain for the answers.

Loved the pour plate question, although my answer was in my opinion not enough. Always the case, "a man of few words, like Raffles", i think my History teacher remarked. Drew the graph wrongly. shit. Wrote rubbish reasons in comparing the RW and KS tests (although i reproduced the diagrams in a tattered fashion).

What else? i just feel that marks keep leaching away from each question. Never felt so sien diao even for pharmaco. Maybe due to the difference in the amount of time used for preparation. May eventually fail the essay questions. Coupled with my poor experimental results, i think that warrants me my first C in NUS. ='(

2007-04-27T19:38:00.000+08:00

Oh My God.

somehow the nurses in pharmaco don't seem to be happy getting trashed. neither do they seem happy about year 2 pharmacists trashing them. worse still, making fun out of it.

was peeking around in blogs these days and chanced upon this entry which made me went "omg?!?"

http://sharkalodoon.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-want-to-go-back-to-jc-days-but.html

"so anyway, i almost told a pharmacy student sitting behind me in the LT to fuck off and die cos he was insulting my nursing friends' intelligence during the pharmaco presentation today."

hmm. wonder what if she really told the pharmacy student (who is a he) to fuck off... haha... there aren't many male pharmacy students btw. oops. hopefully it wasn't me.

right after the pharmaco test me, bx and eesang were walking to the hmk busstop to take bus when bx replied, "hmm the year 1s (pharmers) are taking physiology II mcq tomorrow..."

"...oh then those nursing students are so doubly screwed, pharmaco on wed and physiology on thurs..."

silence. then chuckles.

haha i think it's a bad idea to let the nursing students take pharmaco and physio together. super lot to memorize. dunno whether they got gem or not, seems like it's all core, which means i will die la if i'm inside. i'm dying becos of the pharmacy-only semester... shucks.

haha. salute these people man.

if you want me to take this entry down, please notify me.

2007-04-25T20:07:00.000+08:00

The Little Pleasures of Life

amidst all the pharmaco and whatever stuff that i'm supposed to be reading now, this is what i use to keep my sanity during reading week - television.

i'm now hooked onto this show called The Homecoming well sypnosis u guys can read here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Homecoming_(TV_Series).

it seems like for everything now u can wikipedia it, even your friendly neighbourhood estate. try it. there was once i was so boliao i went and wikied "jurong east". you'll be surprised.

anyway, i'm now a regular devotee to this show and i will probably watch it until it runs out, which is a pity cos it runs out on 30th Apr, after microB. like all shows shown on channel 8, it probably ends with a happy ending or something, but not before those people who deserve to die get killed, etc.

another thing to watch is jia you jin shun! on channel U at 7pm. think the lead actress is quite cute, prob nuan agrees with me, as well as the sister (whom is very familiar). otherwise the show is about old folks and family. but good.

so the routine would be to study until 6pm, slack a while, play organ, then watch channel U at 7pm-8pm then go and pia one more chapter, then watch channel 8 from 9pm-10pm, then bathe and sleep. simple.

nothing much to do nowadays. i've a self-imposed ban on the computer by shutting down the comp (usually i leave it on standby cos it takes a gadzillion years to start the antique up), so i don't touch it unless i really have to, like check for drugs. other than that, it's blogging, friendster, youtube, and peeking at other people's blogs. yeah should have wrote "whyqueue was here" on some of them.

keep loading myself with food. guess stress makes you hungry, that's one of cortisol's effects. recently i looked in the mirror and then looked at the Cushing Syndrome notes, i think i'm like the guy in question.

Cushing's Syndrome.

It doesn't take excessive glucocorticoids to achieve this physiology.

Exams will do as well.

Hypertension - worry too much
"Cataracts" - effect of reading from 12am to 6am in the morning
Red moon face - see above
Increased susceptibility to infection.
Increased appetite
Obesity
Euphoria - "zi high"
Depression - after you find that you can't recall
Psychosis - was this fact there? e.g. memorizing adverse effects of drugs.
Emotional liability - =(

2007-04-25T19:04:00.000+08:00

Post-pharmaco-period (PPP)

FINALLY! it is over. the Great Pharmaco exam.

for so many days my family have to put up with my extended rapping, "yo beta-1 agonist, beta-1 agonist is dobutamine, beta-2, beta-2 agonist is salbutamol, it can make u breathe better, yo"

i guess pharmaco was devastating. everyone agrees yeah? if not we can go toilet and settle.

for me, i wrote until my wrist muscles were in pain. just kept writing. i think after the second question, i threw my grammar to the winds and wrote like i was re-iterating my notes. keep writing. guess i took 40 min for the first question on asthma cos i seem to remember everything!! OHHH heaven. but then after that question, it was downhill all the way as nuggets of information begin to start disappearing like noradrenaline leaking out of the presynaptic nerve cell due to ephedrine. which is bad.

rushed through the short-answer questions. answers were really short, something like one or two pages if i am crappy. there was no time at all, to recall, to actually find out what the question was asking for. usually it was a compare and contrast, "or what would you recommend" type, i just vomitted everything out in one big emetic gush. just write, even though it might be bullshit, but some things make good bullshit u never know.

i should have never studied PK. cos there was a question on graphs and the moment i saw the graph paper before the exam, i said to myself, oh shit. shouldn't have wasted my time on this.

many of the exam questions were from tutorial. which was out of my expectation since i thought these people "love the challenge", they would think of killer questions to keep our minds going, well so they did, and i ended up doing them cos i didn't read tutorials. The PK tutorial. The organophosphate tutorial. Exactly the same. ARGH.

what can i say, i could have simplified my job further if i had read into their minds a bit more. two hours - what can they possibly set? probably not much detail. the problem with us pharm students is that we read too much in-depth, fearing the repercussions of missing out points from the notes leading to loss in marks. well i guess the questions are simply to test your basic understanding of the subject, to separate the students that are awake in lecture and those who are asleep. of course, detail also leads to the distinguishing of the better students from those average ones.

i am not so. i hope i can just get a B for this subject.. if not a B-. no C+ please. yeah call me decadent if you wish, i'm just being realistic.

2007-04-24T15:07:00.000+08:00

Drowning at Pandan canal

hmm, been reading about the incident involving a sec2 girl drowning in the canal. for those who stare at me quizzically, these 4 teenagers were walking along the canal on sunday when they decided to play monkey(?) with their bag, which had their handphones in it. ok, so one missed catch and the bag goes into the canal.

they decide to retrieve it (or risk scolding from their parents) and then venture into the canal, about 2.5m deep. suddenly a downpour arises and huge torrents sweep them away downstream. one of the girls cannot swim and then she panicked and struggled or something, gradually lost contact with the other three, who managed to get to safety. eventually after a 24hr search, she was found, drowned, at the Pandan canal (leading to the sea).

i took 197 back from pharm anal paper yesterday and eventually passed the bridge that linked west coast and jurong together. along the other side was the pandan bridge and the incident jolted back into mind. i guessed as much that after such a long time the chances of survival should be very slim, and i kept looking at the scene until the cycle and carriage building obscured the canal from view.

sometimes, when this sort of freak incident happens, the feeling is well, indescribable. other than the us shooting, which, well happens overseas, this is the other thing in the papers that caught my attention. the wasting of such a young life - she was only 14 years old - left me to question how come simple mistakes such as wading into the canal to retrieve a handphone - would result in a fatality. how treacherous the recent weather has been, with bouts of stormy weather that caused many a torrent and downfall.

it is no doubt that we are complacent - we think we can do it - but never expect fate and nature to deal us such a cruel, unexpected hand. if i were the girl, i would have went in as well in all of perhaps, common sense - after all, what's so difficult about retrieving a bag anyway? but this was because i know how to swim, of course - and being comfortable with water, could have a better chance of survival.

yes - even now i'm complacent, of course. who knows what might actually happen?

2007-04-24T14:41:00.000+08:00

Tell me pharmaco pharmaco pharmaco

tell me when will you be mine??

***

slacking.

Studying for pharmaco is like holding Russia's borders. It's so porous, information keeps slipping out. You have to take a helluva time to rush troops from one end to another end, causing the delayed response of a gout question after a cholinergic rush.

went to whack anti-asthma drugs, corticosteroids and nsaids this morning. information is leaking out already.. haiz. having a headache going through prokinetics, there's so much things to memo and it's not going in.

everyone's saying they'll die for pharmaco. this is not a good sign - there's no guarantee that you will come out tops, or bottoms. so just whack and hope for the best... i got a B and a C+ for the last two class tests, which were lousy results as so to speak. sigh. hope the exam can pull me back to at least a B-...

of course, the ante is upped this time round, with an all-essay format (which i absolutely suck at), and without knowledge of what's going to come out (MoA? SE? DI? Clinical uses? Small details?). how is the question gonna be like? "name n types of cholinergic drugs?" "state n treatments for asthma?" etc. i dunno. whack everything, and hopefully you score on the correct points.

sigh. i need some paracetamol. with caffeine, please.

***

well at least the pharm analysis was ok. i think. so far so good. heard many ppl complain about the calculations. so far, i think i'm correct, without anyone to prove me wrong yet. hmm. hopefully can get A-, its the only A- that i probably can get for this sem. so far, other than pharm analysis, i've never gotten A- before for pharm subjects.

still stoning. wonder how nuan is now... after tomorrow, she'll be relatively more free with two major papers gone. i still have to trudge through microB, whom i assume everyone will be more or less adequately prepared.

well, at least can go home together with her tomorrow.

back to work. gotta do a drug count after the test, to find out exactly how many drugs we are exposed to in pharmaco (i'm sure is >100), then go and scare the juniors. haha, evil.

2007-04-21T17:53:00.000+08:00

the revenge of the anticholinergic agents

Anti-AChEs
edrophonium
neostigmine
physostigmine
pyridostigmine
parathion
eciothiophate

AChE "unblocker"
pralidoxime

NMJ blockers - non-depolarizing
D-tubocurarine
Atracurium
Pancurorium
Rocurorium
Vecurorium

NMJ blockers - depolarizing
suxamethonium

Histamines
1st gen: promethazine, chlorpheniramine, diphenhydramine, dimenhydrinate, etc
2nd gen: cetrizine, loparamide, fenfoxidine (?)

nsaids
aspirin
naproxen
diclofenac
ibuprofen
celecoxib, roxicoxib (is this thing supposed to be in russian, or spelt backwards?)
paracetamol
terfenadine - torsades de pointes.

argh. stop.

2007-04-21T16:14:00.000+08:00

Ranting Time
(reminds me of ranitidine. whatever.)

yeah, i know i shouldn't be writing this now. pretty sick of studying. just memorizing and re-memorizing the notes for the nth time already. well maybe for the second or third time only.. but there's so much!!!

imagine: u have to remember

antacids: hydroxides, carbonates, bicarbonates, trisillicates, Mg, Al, Ca
H2 antagonists: cimetidine, ranitidine, famotidine
PPIs: omeprazole, S-omeprazole, thiophillic sulfa something in acidic canaliculi.
sulfralcate.
bismuth compounds.
misoprostol. causes abortion. PGE1 analogue
adsorbants: activated charcoal, kaolin, pectin, smectite
opioids: loperamide, diphenoxylate.
antispasmodics: hyoscine, meveberine.
SS-analogues: octreotide.
5HT3 antags: alosetron.
bulk laxatives: ispaghula husk, psyllium.
osmotic laxatives: magnesium hydroxide, PEG, cellulose, lactulose
stimulants: bisacodyl, senna. will cause discolouration of the colon (something coli)
emollients (surfactants): docusate, glycerin
lubricants: liquid paraffin (my favourite, causes lipoid pneumonia and leaks out of your ass)
partial 5HT4 agonists: tegaserod.
antihistamines: diphenhydramine, promethazine. cyclizine
antiH1, antiD2: prochlorperazine
antiD2, 5HT4: metoclopramide and domperidone
5HT4: cisapride
5HT3 antag: ondansetron
erythromycin
NK1 antagonist
benzodiazepines
corticosteroids
cholinergics
cannabinoids

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. and that's only for GI drugs... there's more

cholinergics:
muscarine
nicotine
bethanechol
carbachol
methacholine

anti-cholinergics:
hyoscine / scopolamine
atropine
ipratropium
cyclopropamine
(forgot)
pirenzipine

anti-AChEs
(?)

mind's a blank now...

?????

2007-04-20T11:58:00.000+08:00

les miserables

taking a break from pharm anal now.

hmm went to tabulate what's left of my glorious 3-month break and i find...

i have 53 days to enjoy before preceptorship starts.
out of the 53, i have 21 days with nuan and 2 weekends only!!! wth... that's not even half la.

!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!

i have 40+ days of preceptorship (ok, minusing the weekends, it's about 30 days = 6 weeks)

NOW, don't burn any more of my weekends ok. this is worser shit than army, i swear.

2007-04-18T09:01:00.000+08:00

STRESS.

Haiz... it's Reading Week... the most stressed time of the sem for me...

Woke up AGAIN at 3:30 am to piss. It's been 4 nights now, since Saturday, Sunday, Monday and today. Ever since i and nuan had our "last outing together before we really sit down and study". I think it must have been the stress.

Wasn't even this stressed to start with in sem 2 or sem 3, for one.

Subjective evidence:
GI: burping, feel "full of gas", "full".
has seen dramatic reduction in BM (details, i will save for the doc)
CNS: insomnia, 4/7 - usually wakes up nocturnally around 3-4am to pass motion, then finds that he cannot go back to sleep.
has been eating at whim.
CV: experienced sensation of "heart beating very fast" when watching "action movies" 3/7 ago.
Glands: dry mouth ---> drinks more water --> urges goes to toilet more often.

Hmm. dunno whether to visit doctor or not. i think he will just say the same thing (although i would welcome the physical checkup). and give me drugs like Activated Charcoal for constipation (i wanna try docusate or Fybogel). Ask me to drink more water, eat more fruits, exercise more and relax a bit (yeah, right).

One interesting cure for insomnia is the L-amino acid tryptophan (Trp). yeah.

Trp can be converted to serotonin (neurotransmitter) in the following fashion:

Trp --> 5-OH Trp --> 5HT (serotonin)

And this is from wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan#Physiology

Tryptophan and turkey

According to popular belief, eating tryptophan in turkey meat causes drowsiness. Turkey does contain tryptophan, which does have a documented sleep-inducing effect as it is readily converted into serotonin by the body. However, ingestion of turkey alone has not been proven to have this effect. An additional hypothetical mechanism is as follows: A large quantity of any food,^{[original research?]} such as a Thanksgiving feast, introduces large quantities of both carbohydrates and branched-chain amino acids releasing insulin. Insulin stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (and not tryptophan) by muscle cells through the myocyte membranes. The result is an increase in the ratio of tryptophan to large neutral amino acids in the blood. This reduces competition with other amino acids for the Large Neutral Amino Acid Transporter protein for uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system. Once inside the central nervous system, tryptophan is converted into serotonin by the raphe nuclei, and serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.

Alcoholic beverage consumption at holiday feasts is likely to compound the effect.^{[original research?]}

On average, a full grown male must consume some 45 pounds of turkey to have any narcoleptic effect.^{[citation needed]}

Hmm. well according to the doc Trp is found in milk powder, which explains why babies sleep after they finish their milk. So it ain't true.

Sigh.. the only way to stop the constipation and the insomnia, as taught by David Woo, is regularity. Water, fibre and exercise helps too (so there's practically nothing u can do about it).

SIgh.

2007-04-16T04:55:00.000+08:00

Insomnia part 2...

I really need HCTZ.

Hmm slacked the whole day away on sunday. did what i could for microB, then wanted to study pharmaco. In fact, sunday should study pharmaco already since i so suck at it.
but spent the evening and night watching The Last Samurai and New Police Story which, took 4 1/2 hours. i just didn't feel like starting pharmaco. and i was getting restless.

Guess i'm tired. or really stressed out. really felt lethargic during the night. somehow for some reason... my skin temperature climbed such that even though i was wearing singlet and shorts i still felt very hot. then suddenly i went into this tachycardia or something, it was like i could just feel my heart beating very fast.

well, given that i wanted to prevent myself falling asleep (that's why i watched the shows!) from 7pm to 10pm where i would rejoin the "normal" circadian rhythm and tell my body hey, this is the correct time to sleep instead, i was feeling damn sleepy during the shows. sedative medication didn't help much either.

but good! i made it to 10:30 after New Police Story and went to bathe. fell asleep shortly after. but woke up at 2am and 4am, first to go toilet, and second time for good, which explains this entry at 5am.

oh well.. time to start on pharmaco now =)

2007-04-15T01:54:00.000+08:00

picture from imdb.com.

PREPARE FOR GLORY!!!

i think, this post should read "PREPARE TO DIE!!!"

ok for all those who watched the shortest-titled film in singapore, (ok, well, there's 15...) u guys know about some Spartan fellas who wanted to block the invading persian army or whatever into sparta by meeting them at this valley or something, something like a Coulter-Counter apparatus.

problem was, the spartans only had 300 soldiers, (didn't look like they had much armor), advantage of terrain, bravery, and nothing much else versus a mass of like 100000 turkish forces. yup, 10^2.47 vs 10^5, well.. difference of 2.53, slight consolation.

(i didnt watch the movie as it was plotless... might as well play some computer game.)

and SO, i find myself in the similar situation like those 300 poor Spartan ~~bastards~~ ok, martyrs (which is a bad word to use nowadays) patriots. i think only something like God mode could have saved them, or endless bursts of Starfall. but anyway.

exam is coming!!! and i'm starting to get panicky. AGAIN. everytime like that one. study so much, in the end still screw up. FOUR sems liao, still dunno what the hell is wrong. ok FINE, i didn't put consistent effort in studying all the sem, i was like going to lectures and copying, diligently, nodding my head away in unison to the rest, then once coffee break or lecture ends everything is left back at the LT. damn.

ok, not everything.. i think i absorbed still much more than last sem. still, that doesn't explain why i got a C+ for my pharmaco. !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@! and why people are getting As all the way. yar.. can't compare, can't complain much either.

then one of the mates brought the issue of stupidity which set me thinking - am i stupid? maybe so, maybe after the operation. without dragging into genetic issues, i've been trumping everyone in pri, sec and JC like wow-bang. but now.. seems like i've met my Waterloo (no, not the toilet) and there are indeed higher beings, more exalted, more blessed with a higher intelligence.

hmm. i dun blame them giving me the B's and C's. guess it's a give and take situation. i'm glad i made it here after all, considering my operation and stuff. eventually, well grades matter when you step out of Uni, but for the majority, i guess all it determines is where you go and how high your pay is.

i feel OLD. haha... 22 years old liao. i look at my 5yo pic and wonder if, by some odd time-travel continnum, could that 5yo boy have ever realised that someone was looking at him, and that he would end up in such a state where he has to mug like crazy?

(refer above) what is glory, when you have die in the end?

***

tried to study with nuan again today. i slept, she studied.
conculsion: try again.

2007-04-14T09:03:00.000+08:00

Back to business

Hmm.. here i am again... i guess there are only two situations where i will blog:

(1) where i am suffering from insomnia
(2) where it is exams and i need to rant
(3) where there is something i absolutely need to bitch about by holding "shift" and dragging my right index finger from 1 to 10 and back to 1.

(result: !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!)

ok, three situations.

Hmm... so i AM suffering from insomnia and it's exams period. So i need to blog cos mostly, i can't sleep and it's like 4am in the morning and it sucks cos part of you (esp the eyes) wants to close, but part of you (somewhere in the brain) is still jumping around like a mad bugger pissin' all the other organs who wanna go and sleep for goodness' sake.

haven't suffered much from insomnia this sem, which is good.

anyway. exams and beyond.
23th Apr - Pharm Analysis
25th Apr - Pharmacology I - *DIEDED*
27th Apr - Pharm Microbiology
2nd May - Pharmacy Prac II, Metabolism and Regulation
5-6 May - YEP leader course.
7th May - 103 Drugs Test.
16th May - bhbh3 leaving for phil.
3-5 Jun - bhbh3 coming back.
9th Jun - BB@NCC (1st session)
17-24 Jun - recce trip to india.
25 Jun-End of hols - Preceptorship@ Mt Elizabeth.
30 Jun - BB@NCC (2nd session) - not required to attend.

Along the way:
Jul-Aug - Rag dance: the big elephant is back again.
May help the juniors out with FOCC, if they allow me to. haha. pity i wun be able to participiate directly in it (although i admit, i screwed up bad and they'd prob do 10x better than me)

What else i wanna do:
complete GTA San Andreas (by overstaying at wang's place) and catch up with the old guys

What i wanna do now:
sleep 3h.

What i wanna do to this blog:
remove all the !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@! songs and install the Constance's Ipod - The Ipod I Found On Her Blog.
remove all the old junk.
add new junk.

cons, so now i blogged. haha
amazed at how many people still read my blog. amazingly all the hyperlinks work. saw a hyperlink on a blog that i would, in my imagination, never have dreamt of the owner, who is a distant friend, place it on her blog.

hmm... i like this quote.. came from a recent convert of bridge.. haha..
when you trump an Ace with a di (two)
We were talking about how certain people (like me) always keep on getting lower grades, such that certain people (unlike me) gets higher grades, i hope you know what i mean and i trust that you will view this statement as being absolutely politically correct.
So, in this case, it is viewed as a case of the latter group "trumping" the former... as with all things Singaporean, even terms in a game can be used henceforth.
So when the most powerful card in a suit is being trumped by the least powerful trump card, it goes to show that certain areas of study can be exploited such that it is still possible for the former group to have an advantage over the latter group, just for a short while. The short taste of victory, like that word - bittersweet. Saccharine.

Haha i'm talking rubbish now.

A fella i knew once said, everyone is trying so hard, this is by the likes of Darwinism. I suggested hence, why not all of us just take a step back together and relax? then we can all get our desired grades and yet not try so hard.

Still not sleepy. argh

2007-04-14T09:02:00.000+08:00

Remember!

I forgot to put the "@hotmail.com" at the back of my username and this is what i got from blogger:

Remember:
You will sign in to New Blogger with your Google Account email address, whyqueue@hotmail.com, from now on.

hmm... big brother?

2007-04-13T22:22:00.001+08:00

School Smart

You're more of a 'school smarts' kind of person. You are best with the theoretical things, and your intelligence is both natural and learned - a blend of personal, experiential knowledge and book learnin'.

40% theoretical intelligence
40% learned intelligence

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

2007-03-20T09:10:00.000+08:00

pissed.

in lt26doing tutorial now. bored.

just now went to buy drink and someone knocked me and the drink spilled out of my hand. not that i mind very much. turned back to face the fella then saw this indian he just said "well that happened to someone yesterday too". damn.

then just now someone in my group deleted the soap notes at 2am yesterday! and of cos i slept earlier than than that so i realised that only at 7:20am when i woke up. mad rush to upload notes. damn. got stuck in traffic, late for lecture.

and got stuck under the fan. now nursing a heavy cold.

wtf.

2007-03-18T17:46:00.000+08:00

The Lightning Express

Went to sweelan's party in my dad's car and on the way i heard this song on radio gold 90.5... the lyrics are very familiar, i seem to have heard it in primary school before. but it made me cry.

The lightning express from the depot so grand
Had started out on its way
All of the passengers that were on board
Seemed to be happy and gay
But one little boy who sat by himself
Was reading a letter he had
You could plainly tell by the look on his face
That the contents of it made him sad

The stern old conductor then started his round
Taking tickets from everyone there
And finally reaching the sad little boy
He gruffly demanded his fare
"I have no ticket" the boy then replied
"But I'll pay you back someday"
"Then I'll put you off at the next stop we make"
But he stopped when he heard the boy say

*"Please Mr. Conductor
Don't put me off of this train
The best friend I have in this world sir
Is waiting for me in pain
Expecting to die any moment sir
And may not live through the day
I wanna reach home and kiss mother goodbye
Before God takes her away"

A girl sitting near was heard to exclaim
"If you put him off, it's a shame"
Taking his hand, a collection she made
The boy's way was paid on the train
"I'm obliged to you miss for your kindness to me"
"You're welcome," she said, never fear
Each time the conductor would pass through the car
The boy's words would ring in his ear

Repeat Chorus

Chords/playing (A Major)
Verse
bcbcaabcbca (A)
cdddafae (D) (A)
cbcaabcbca (A)
bbbbbcb (B7, E7)
bcbcaabcbca (A)
cdddafae (D) (A)
fafbafeeac (D) (A)
cccbagaba (A) (E7) (A)
Chorus:
cbabca
cdddafae
cbcaabcbca
bbbbbcb
bcbcaabcbca
cdddafae
fafbafeeac
cccbagaba

***

2007-03-15T20:34:00.000+08:00

some stuff from jw.

i almost cried...

**

前言：每个女孩都是天使，当她落下一滴眼泪时，上帝就收回她的翅膀。所以，世间的男孩都应该记得，当你面前的女子为你落下一滴泪时，她已经为你放弃了整个天堂。

梦幻般的天堂,居住着很多天使,其中有一个天使很特别,她16岁,有着一双美丽的蓝色翅膀. 黑黑的头发披洒在肩膀,大大的眼睛总是笑着.很美.那就是我. 每个天使的额头上都有一个不同的标记,我的是一个蓝色的雪花，所以叫蓝雪儿，职务是守护爱情。

有一天上帝说要派两个天使去人间寻找男人的真情, 在人间的期间不可以用法力和说出真相，要用自己的能力，但不能动真情。于是,我是其中的一个。

我和一个叫飘飘的天使被放在了一个美丽的城市----桂林。我们选择了一所学校,决定在那里寻找。

进校后,好多的男孩都可以作为目标，可是我觉得他们不是最好的人选。

有一天,我在水池洗衣服,看到了一个的男孩,正对着我笑。 "好帅啊!"我不禁的脸红了。后来我知道他是刚转来的学生,叫子毅。

每天,我站在班级的门口,总能看见他,我感觉得到他也在看我。糟了!我好象喜欢上他了，怎么办?

有一天,一个同学过生日,我去了,他也在。不知为什么,心里好高兴。后来他喝了好多的酒.大家都走了,只有我。

"去玩啊?"忽然他问我。

"好啊。"我糊里糊涂的答应了。

我们去了黑山植物园,坐在草地上我们聊了很多，我不知道这算不算是人间所谓的谈恋爱。我们在街上散步,笑着,闹着，不知不觉已经到了12点。

"累了吧?找个地方休息吧!"

"恩!"

那一夜,我们在一个旅馆住的，我和他睡在一个被子里。他搂着我,整整一晚我们都没有睡着。

回去后,我手里拿着他的衣服----是我想帮他洗的，我看见了飘飘。

"你爱上他了?"她质问我。

"没有。" "那你昨晚去哪了?"

"我.........我去玩了。"

"你别忘了,我们不是凡人,不可以有凡人的感情，懂吗?"

"我知道!!"我大吼道，"我的事不用你管!"

"随你便,你会后悔的."说完她就走了。

我会后悔吗?我自己也不知道。

以后的日子里,我们常常在一起散步、聊天、我好开心。不过没多久,飘飘告诉我,上帝已经知道我动了凡心,要我回去。

我哭了,真的要放弃这段感情吗?我晚上约了他见面，想和他说我要走了,可是话到嘴边还是没有说出口。

他吻了我,抱住了我,虽然没有说什么,可我满足了,于是,我决定,为了他不做天使。

我回到了天上,我向上帝请求:"让我做一个凡人吧!"

"你不后悔吗?想做凡人是要折断翅膀的。 "

"我不怕痛!"

"好吧!既然你心意已决，我就答应你。"

在斩台上,我最后抚摩着我的翅膀,它泛着幽幽的蓝光,好象也在哭。"永别了!我的翅膀,我的天堂。"

上帝最后一次问我:"你不再想想了吗?"

"不了！"当刀光闪过,一阵巨痛划过我的全身,我就什么也不知道了。当我醒来时,已躺在了宿舍里,

我强忍着痛走出了门。找到了他," 我好想你 !"我扑到他的怀里。

"我们谈谈吧!"

我抬起头："谈?谈什么?"

"我其实一直把你当朋友，不是喜欢你。"

天啊!听到他的话,好象是晴天霹雳："为什么?为什么?我哪里不好吗?我可以改啊!怎么会是朋友呢?"我快崩溃了。

"没有，你没有什么不好，只是我有女朋友了。"

"你当初为什么不说?为什么?"

"我没有必要告诉你啊?"他象征的笑着。

"那你为什么抱我,吻我？这代表什么?"

"我和朋友都是这样的,什么年代了，这算什么啊!"

我明明听到了我心碎的声音，有一种液体从我的眼里流下 ---人叫它:眼泪。我是一个人了。

那天是平安夜,我哭了好久。那天,雨好大，我坐在天台上,朋友说喝了酒就可以忘了忧愁，于是我买了3瓶。

"好苦啊!原来酒和爱情一样是苦涩的。"我醉了,可还是好想他,好伤心,好心痛。其实,他早已经在我的心里了。我后悔了吗?不知道。

雨水和眼泪模糊了我的眼睛。遥望天空，那个我曾飞翔过的地方，我用力的跳起,却重重的跌落在地上，我不再能飞了。

"你很后悔吧?想飞回天堂?"飘飘出现在我的面前。

"我没有，只是没有想到是这样的结果。可我从不后悔爱上他,尽管.........他不爱我。"

我苦笑着，我願逃離天堂，飛向你的身邊，尋找我們的愛。雖然你離我越來越遠，但我不會放棄，因爲我愛你。雖然你騙了我，吻了我，到了最後你不要我。我哭過，但是這對你毫無作用，你的心是那麽的冷，把我凍的傷痕累累，我卻依然想用我的愛來溫暖你。因爲，我已經愛上你了。

平安夜我許的願望是：即使你不愛我，但我還是希望你每天都快快樂樂，永遠開心，健康，平安，幸福，找到心中的最愛。

你我都說過，喜歡和愛不同。但你知道嗎？我已經愛上你了。为了你，我忍痛折断了我的翅膀，不再飞，做个凡人，那样才能爱你，可你却离开了我。

翅膀没有了，好痛！可是失去你，我的心更痛！你明白吗？我对你的爱？我哭时，你在哪里开心？我再也不能飞了，我失去了我美丽的蓝色翅膀，我的最爱，也失去了你。

thanks dear, for the wings that you have forsaken for me ~

2007-03-15T19:13:00.000+08:00

The first two weeks of march

March is here, and the engine is supposedly to be gathering steam.

No it's not for me. my mind is still filled with thoughts of nuanxin, grand theft auto san andreas and... well that's pretty much for now.

Three tests have flown past since school reopened after the mid-sem break. Two of the test results have been announced.

Think i didn't do very well, i mean, well enough than some people, but yet, not well enough than other people, u know. somewhere in the middle.

I shall not attempt to hide my results. They're not absolutely fantastic either.
LSM2101 after-midsem test: 85%
PP2106-the-killer-test: B

Pharmaco(logy) test results were out today, and people scrambled to read them. I say i got somewhat of a blessing in disguise. There was negative marking, so that pretty much killed off some classmates who were too eager to answer questions. I went in without much knowledge when i enter and i still got away with a B. (But yet, i attempted most of the questions, so i probably got some friendly fire as well...)

Pharmaco test was horrible, it was true/false --> you MUST know whats going on, and it was in true medico-style: there were 25 questions, with 4 sub-parts in each question, means u had to answer a total of 100 questions in a time of 45 minutes. Shockwave from the lecture theatre.

I guess.. after these two tests.. I really know where my limit is and that my Mr. Fantastic streak has stopped (well, actually i realised that long ago). Was talking to a friend yesterday and he said that grades weren't everything in university, it's what you do ultimately at your workplace that determines how far you go, or something like that. Examples such as successful millionaires without degrees have been quoted ad lib, which i somewhat agree. Not everything can be solved with knowledge.

It's sad that we're directly pitted against our own classmates, again, to stress, some might be our friends, close friends, or cliques. When a friend of yours gets better grades than you, naturally you'll feel jealous, saying "hey why am i getting lousier grades than him or her?" despite being such good friends. And to those who are not within our clique we might even make malicious remarks. But, cruel as it seems, i guess it's the university's ways to make us realise that, in the workplace, no matter how close you are to the particular person, you'll still find out that he or she's an adversary in some matters. For example, fighting for opporturnities, or even promotions. There is no right or wrong - it's right if you come out winning, and wrong otherwise.

Sigh.

For now, for this sem, i still hope i can have grades good enough to survive. May not get into second upper honors. May not do FYP. Let time decide. I just hope to get a good clique of real friends by the time i leave, a great relationship with nuan, and many vivid colourful memories that bring back wonderful bouts of nostalgia in the near future.

No test next week (week 10). Tests ahead:
Week 11: Lab tests (tues, wed), pharm analysis test (thu)
Week 12: pharmaco test 2 (thu)
Week 13: LSM CA 2 (tue)
Week 14: reading week
Week 15: final exams.

2007-03-12T20:24:00.000+08:00

Back to Basics

March is here. Test after test, week after week...

contrary to what i thought would happen to me on year ago, i'm not doing well in studies. neither am i on a yep. nor juggling six modules. nor being overly active in pharm. nor aiming to be... whatever.

time is starting to fly once u're entering the third month of the term... the next month will be exam month, so this is the time to catch up, which i'm obviously not doing.

i just look forward to the end of the day so that i can see nuan again... look forward to wednesdays where we can volunteer together, followed by some spare time left for dinner... look forward to the end of the week when we can go out together...

haiz. realizing i'm neglecting all my friends as i devote more time to my precious.

one of my jc friends, yew sen, had this quote: u can choose only two out of the three: friends, family (in this case, girlfriend), and studies. i guess he's right after all.

yup, for those of u who are not in the know, i'm attached. to this lovely lady called nuan xin. picture a few entries back. sorry i kept it from u guys for so long, esp leo and ws (if u guys still read this column). mainly what i wanna say.

yep. time to go back to study again.

2007-03-09T01:40:00.000+08:00

Robin Becks - First Time

There's always a first time for everything.

***

First time
first love
oh what feeling is this
Electricity flows
with the very first kiss

Like a break in the clouds
and the first ray of sun
I can feel it inside
something new has begun
And it's taking control
of my body and mind
It begins
when I heard
I love you
For the very first time

This life
this love
oh what sweetness I fee
lso mysterious yet so incredibly real
It's an uncharted sea
it's an unopened door
But ya got to reach and
ya gotta explore
Even thought you're not sure
till the moment arrives
he is and you know
you're in love
for the very first time

And baby when I met you
every feeling I had was new
I don't think there are words to
describe the sensations,
oh no no no

And when something's happens
that words can't define
only then do you know
you're in love
for the very first time...

2007-03-09T01:04:00.000+08:00

why queue?'s a series of unfortunate events

when you're down and out, every bad thing that happens to you, accumulates.... to the negative sense of mood.
and you tend to ignore every good thing that comes along your way.

Wednesday.

11pm-12am thursday: quarrel.
12am-1am: busy with printing notes, answering rogue questions about an experiment which i had no idea about and calculating rogue figures. on msn. answering yep trip questions. on msn. congratulating jw on her dance. on msn.

ignoring nuan. on msn.
in total, i had about 7 windows on msn. normal workload: 1 window.

tried printing notes. printer jammed. wasted two pieces of paper. document came out lousy. can't remove the jammed paper. removed and to my horror it's badly deformed. demoralized that i have to do 2 tutorials by tmr which i'm printing out now. hunted all over the house for stapler. damn pissed at not being able to find one after searching all the cupboards. lamented that, in such a big house, there's no stapler. although i can find an abundance of stapler bullets all over the house. felt stupid at asking cecilia to leave my trusty pink stapler, used since hall days, in the PS room lost and found counter. cursed the person who took the stapler even though she left it at 4pm and i went to check at 5pm.

don't take things which are not yours, asshole.

12pm. came to sch. 1pm. went to buy stapler for $2.5. used up the last $2 note in my wallet. quite broke now. went to buy coffee for 60c. real milk coffee, not yuan yang.

1:30pm. both mechanical pencils broke down, no lead. used 2b pencils from last lsm test instead. blunt and disgusting.

2pm. came to LT20 for pharm prac lecture. deep in the middle of a card game when peirong asked me to pay up $50 for class fund, if not next time she sees me pay $55. lost that game somemore. real bad mood now. thought of last night's quarrel over a small thing and totally flared up. getting uncontrollable. went to the back of LT20 and saw grace talking on the phone. went into the dark antechamber instead, squatted in the shitting position back facing the wall. surprised junice who was on her way to the toilet. deep breaths. semi-calmed down.

3pm. break. talked to no one, once break was announced i made for the ATM outside LT27. armed with blank expression to the surprise of the pharm seniors sitting outside the LT. withdrew $50 and handed it to peirong. went to lvl 4 toilet. washed my face. came down. saw my bag on the seat and promptly slammed it down hard, alarming wanchee and mayi sitting on the lower tier. yuantai asked me why was i so angry. i didn't reply. i didn't know myself. during the 2nd half of the lecture i just scribbled away furiously.

4pm. pharm analysis. moved to the uppermost tier to rest my head against the wall. started lsm tutorial. saw dr chan walking in. class started. first person he picked to answer the question was me and i didn't know a shit. flipping through notes. jason offered me his notes but then dr chan said "oh look he's flipping through answers now" or something. refused the answers. getting pissed why i'm not coming into this lecture prepared as i would have expected. answered the question wrongly, my voice resonating through the whole, silent LT.

got better during the lecture. by 5:30pm i was quite neutral. after lecture i zoomed out. headed from LT20 to YIH by foot. didn't wanna call nuan. it would make things worse.

YIH. ate. approached the stall but remembered i had no cash. went to draw. came back. bought food. wanted to call nuan. hesitant. decided to wait for her sms. went to study room to attempt the tutorials. phone turned to silent. half attempting half looking at the phone. jw asked me whether i would be going for her concert. checked with lin qun. nope. sad for her.

wang asked me out for dinner instead, although i have eaten. took the 96 from YIH to clementi MRT. trains were darn packed. didn't know rush hr traffic was that shitty. had to get on the third train eventually after some pushing around. just to take one stop to jurong east.

7-8pm. wang. not too bad. jokes abound. was good.

8-10pm. tutorials. not much done. didn't add on any stuff for pharm prac tutorial. guess i'll type. listened to songs, esp 我真的受伤了 (wo zhen de shou shang le) by jacky cheung. it's in D Major. sad song.

10pm-11pm. nuan came online. answered her with one-word replies. very hostile(myself). still hiding around the barrier that i have foolishly erected.

----

disclaimer:

i do not blame peirong or dr eric chan on what they have done today. they did their duty as treasurer, collecting money from students, and lecturer, asking questions before lecture (which he does).

it's just unfortunate that they had to do it on such a day, when i wasn't feeling myself and my rebellious self had come out to play.

to all the others who witnessed this horrible self of mine, i sincerely apologise. esp to junice, mayi, wanchee and all the guys.

2007-03-07T23:21:00.000+08:00

Another wednesday

Today.. nothing much happened: only these:

1) Lab: Two titrations, done in duplicate.
Blunders: didn't add 50ml of water to my solution then was wondering why the thing remained cloudy when everyone else's was clear!! argh. then titrated all the way until endpoint = 19.0ml which was quite close to the original but asked Dr Chan to have a look and he said: "wahhh, like that ar, i dunno what endpoint is reached liao lei..." or something like that lar. wah so paiseh.

then #2: titration for thiosulphate and iodine. was happily doing the second thiosulphate titration, put the iodine liao and close to my first value of 43.5 ml and then... the burette leaked!!!! wtf!!!! i could have cried. all my hard work in prep the solution (it takes at least 20 minutes to prep one stupid flask) GONE! boohoo... the lab tech could just look at me and say.. "you're redoing?" yeah, sad fact.

#3. the two values didn't match very closely, about 0.4ml apart. shit = fake results.

2) NUH volunteering. Was still feeling nervous but always armed with the Nike slogan: just do it!!! went to talk to the patients before their dinner.

Was talking to an patient, clearly bedridden and having that dazed, sian diao look. intro myself and where i came from, SOP. asked if he'd liked to talk, SOP, as from nuan's mouth.

whatever followed was definitely not SOP.

he is clearly unresponsive, but damn, i haven't talked to a single soul in the ward yet and i might as well make this one my first. WRONG! so further i prompted, "are you bored? would u like to talk?" etc.

then, came the horrible thought that i suspected, that he could be having problems talking. maybe he had an op near his larnygeal area, or whatever. so i asked:

"can you talk?"

it was such a question so commonly used in SOAPs, e.g. to find out whether the patient is suffering from any laryngeal discomfort or wad... but as a volunteer... it is deeply insulting and inappropriate... would it suggest that he was dumb? or am i just simply laughing at his plight?

the moment these words came out of my mouth, i felt so stupid. how can i be so insensitive!!! but it was so reflex. i mean as a pharmacist... next time i will be asking people in such an "insensitive" manner.

but as a volunteer.. i guess i have no right to.

then i was thinking.. i could learn... i must learn. to switch between volunteer and pharmacist mode... to ask the right questions within the appropriate job scopes...

nuan asked me... do i want to volunteer? what do i want from volunteering?

answer: to learn something... soft skills.

2007-03-05T22:25:00.000+08:00

A touching story

A true story. Names are withheld for privacy.

There was once this young boy about 4 years old who could not converse well with others, only guttural noises and simple words. for a long time his parents tried to teach him how to speak.

one day this uncle of his came and offered him a sweet. the boy accepted the sweet and ate it on the spot. after he finished, he asked for a second one, to which the uncle gave it to him.

to everyone's astonishment, he offered the sweet to his twin sister... everyone was so amazed by his action.

to even greater astonishment, the sister bit half of the accepted sweet and offered the other half back to him.

the uncle then decided to try again. he took 2 lollipops and hid one behind his back. he then offered the sweet to the boy. after accepting the first lollipop, the boy wanted another lollipop.

as predicted, the boy offered the second lollipop to his sister...

***

2007-03-05T18:55:00.000+08:00

My laptop wallpaper. No, she's not my sister.

2007-03-02T13:25:00.000+08:00

We're here because urea

For those people who missed Prof Tan CH (aka the LSM amino acid lecturer)'s lecture this friday, this is one of the memorable moments that make lecture worth going... or maybe not worth going.

WE’RE HERE BECAUSE UREA (Tune: “The Bold Gendarmes’”)

The endogenous repletion of water in the sea
Lets nitrogenous excretion proceed quite easily
For ammonia though toxic is quickly washed away
So fish excrete (4 times) the ammonotelic way (repeat)

But new terrestrial creatures to survive where it was dry
Developed metabolic features in order to detoxify
Since urea is quite soluble and its doesn’t make you sick
We each excrete (4 times) as a ureotelic (repeat)

When protein breakdown is induced (to make new glucose, say)
Amino acids thus produced give nitrogen away
Keto acids are acceptors; and oxaloacetate
Transaminates …….. giving rise to aspartate

Glutamate too may be produced from oxoglutarate
And now that it’s been introduced deamination is its fate
For inside each mitochondrion of every liver cell
Is GDH ….. (reducing NAD as well)

Ammonia that’s thus set free combined with CO2
Utilising ATP (and an extra squiggle too)
The effector of the synthetase is acetyl glutamate
The product formed …… carbamoylphosphate

Two amino acid oddities now enter on the scene
The essential commodities, ornithine and citrulline
Ornithine starts in the cytosol, citrulline in mitos, free
Then they exchange …… electrogenically

Carbamoylphosphate carbamylates the ornithine
So we get a kind of steady state generating citrulline
Citrulline now is exported, then combined with aspartate
And generates ….. argininosuccinate

That Schiff base condensation utilises ATP
But there is now elimination and fumarate’s set free
Fumarate through citric cycle yields oxaloacetate
That then in turn ….. gives another aspartate

That cleavage mentioned just before also yielded arginine
And what this pathway’s called a cycle for can now readily be seen
For arginine is hydrolysed regenerating ornithine
Which can exchange ….. for another citrulline

That arginase reaction then also yielded urea
(Aspartate gave one nitrogen, one from ammonia)
And we thus complete the cycle that let us leave the sea
Sing urea …… which set the people free

2007-02-23T19:28:00.000+08:00

20 Things You Didn't Know About Lab Accidents

from www.discover.com.

***

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Lab Accidents
LSD, gunpowder, Viagra, and the Incredible Hulk all have something in common.
By Sean Markey
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 11 November 2006

1 There went our best chance: In the ninth century, a team of Chinese alchemists trying to synthesize an "elixir of immortality" from saltpeter, sulfur, realgar, and dried honey instead invented gunpowder.
2 German scientist Hennig Brand stored 50 buckets of urine in his cellar for months in 1675, hoping that it would turn into gold. Instead, an obscure mix of alchemy and chemistry yielded a waxy, glowing goo that spontaneously burst into flame—the element now known as phosphorus.
3 Soldiers supplied the raw material in vast, sloshing quantities until the 1750s, when Swedish chemist Carl Scheele developed an industrial method of producing phosphorus. He discovered eight other elements, including chlorine, oxygen, and nitrogen, and compounds like ammonia, glycerin, and prussic acid.
4 Scheele was found dead in his lab at age 43, perhaps owing to his propensity for tasting his own toxic chemicals.
5 Kevlar, superglue, cellophane, Post-it notes, photographs, and the phonograph: They all emerged from laboratory blunders.
6 The Flash, created in 1940 for All-American Publications, was the first comic book hero to develop superpowers after a lab accident, attaining "super speed" after inhaling "hard water" vapors.
7 Other beneficiaries of the Freak Lab Mishap include Plastic Man (struck by a falling drum full of acid), the Hulk (irradiated by an experimental bomb), and of course, Spider-Man (bitten by a radioactive spider).
8 In real life, perhaps a bigger risk comes from lab-contracted diseases. The world's last documented case of smallpox killed photographer Janet Parker in 1978 after the virus escaped from a lab at the University of Birmingham in England.
9 But sometimes humans strike back: Alexander Fleming, famous for his serendipitous discovery of penicillin, also chanced upon an antibiotic enzyme in nasal mucus when he sneezed onto a bacterial sample and noticed that his snot kept the microbes in check.
10 The lab-accident rate in schools and colleges is 100 to 1,000 times greater than at firms like Dow or DuPont.
11 In 1938 DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett opened a dud canister of tetrafluoroethylene gas and discovered an amazing, nearly friction-free white powder. He named it Teflon.
12 Perhaps he should have chucked it out instead: In 2005 the Environmental Protection Agency identified a Teflon ingredient, perfluorooctanoic acid, as a "likely carcinogen." It is now in the bloodstream of 95 percent of Americans.
13 After a 1992 drug trial in the Welsh mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, male subjects reported that sildenafil citrate hadn't done much for their angina, but it did have an unusual side effect on another part of their anatomy. Today the drug is sold as Viagra.
The picture on these tabs of acid commemorates Albert Hoffman's first significant trip, when he went for a bike ride.14 In 1943 Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman inadvertently absorbed a small quantity of lysergic acid through his fingertips and experienced "dizziness . . . visual distortions . . . [a] desire to laugh." The age of LSD had begun.
15 Hoffman's long, strange trip continues. He turned 100 this past January.
16 Why he's not the father of the electric chair: While trying to electrocute a turkey, Benjamin Franklin sent a whopping jolt from two Leyden jars into his own body. "The flash was very great and the crack as loud as a Pistol," he wrote, describing the incident as an "Experiment in Electricity that I desire never to repeat."
17 In 1965 astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson scrubbed their Bell Labs radio antenna to rid it of pigeon droppings, which they suspected were causing the instrument's annoying steady hiss.
18 That noise turned out to be the microwave echo of the Big Bang.
19 The world has scores of superpowerful particle accelerators. Last year, a fireball created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Upton, New York, had the characteristics of a black hole. Physicists are reasonably sure that no such black holes could escape and consume Earth.
20 Reasonably.

2007-02-22T20:02:00.000+08:00

Thursday

Letters from Iwo Jima just came out today... and there's no one to watch with me... =(
yz, my war buddy, says he'll catch it with me tmr... hmm.. gotta ask him tmr again
nuan is busy with her essay. oh philo, OMG. philo is one subject that only certain people can appreciate, and i am not one of them. she's now flipping through the webcasts and praying for a miracle from socrates. HA.

Anyway, Letters (the film) is about the ill-fated defence of Iwo Jima, told using the Jap perspective. After going through GEK2022 (Samurai, Geisha and Yongqiang), it is certainly interesting to try to avoid stereotyping these banzai soldiers as bloodthirsty orcs or trolls holding on to this rock in the East China Sea (?), as what is seen in US propaganda war films and computer games such as Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. Japs (Japanese soldiers) seem to always be depicted as gutteral beings firing lousy one-shot-reload rifles and are remembered for their banzai charge with bayonets glinting in the air and a horrifying war-cry. And during occupation, they are in charge of cutting limbs, heads, and bayonetting innocent civilians, as shown in the local production, The Price of Peace, and many others.

While all of this may be true in history, Letters seem to give the humane story of a loser, battling in vain. Many of a time, we have been victors, such that we do not know the sting of losing; some cannot take it, some are at a certain loss of what to do.

I believe, other than the killing that takes place in the film, the show will nevertheless focus on themes like brotherhood, loyalty vs humanity. and i believe it will be worth its 4 stars. haha

***

slacked the whole afternoon away.. read through ONCE the glucose notes.

basically, our body is like a car, and glucose units are like petrol cans. it is even better than a car, cos it can consume glucose and turn it into CASH (NADH, FADH2, NADPH) which can be redeemed at the ETC "bank" into ATP, which can be used to fuel other energy requirements. it can store its own glucose by condensing it into a highly branched form known as glycogen, and "re-cycle" its glucose through gluconeogenesis, as well as convert to other forms of "kerosene, motor oil" through the hexose monophosphate shunt.

amazing! i shall draw the mind map later.

at every pathway there are "switches" (enzymes) which can be turned on and off, like something u play in 2-d video games. turn on, the pathway moves to the right, turned off, the pathway moves to the left, etc.

actually. the whole thing is much like a video game. lolz.
just don't make me answer the questions in detail. ha.

(lets see if i can still say this in april-may)

2007-02-17T10:00:00.000+08:00

Reunion Dinner

it is cool to see all the folks back again.

went to my paternal grandparents' house to eat reunion dinner. as usual, every year, a steamboat with all sorts of raw food presents itself. met the regulars: 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th uncle. surprised to hear that my cousin has earned himself enough years to serve the nation! yep he's 18 this year and in jc2. and his sister is already in sec4!! amazing.

well i never interacted with them much, even as we are supposed to meet every sunday for food at grandparents' house (yes i didn't go), since perhaps my jc years. hence it comes as a rude shock that all my cousins have blossomed and matured into adolescence. It is hard to imagine them once as the kids who were great fans of central's kiddie programs... from their throats come a deep, hollowed voice that i cannot recognise not link it to them.

i have aged - they have grown up.

being 22... soon i will be raising a family of my own. the cycle repeats itself.

my sixth uncle's two children - one a toddler of 2-3 years old (?), one a infant of 2-3 months old - still lay innocently in their parent's arms. it is hard to disregard the fact that my sixth uncle was my best playmate, when i was small and the rest of the children had too large an age gap to fill. he was in university, and i was in primary school.

now, it seems like his children (whom, interestingly, i still call cousins) would most likely be the companions of the next generation.

i still remember the time when i was seven years old. and now i am twenty-two.

time flies.

2007-02-15T00:56:00.000+08:00

Wednesday - Valentine's Day

i woke up and it felt good. haha.

wanted to deliver sandwich "made with love" to nuan in the morning.. but she had to buy flowers and go to the market. so ate 1/4 of the sandwich instead. made the sandwich yesterday, 12:00am. haha, kept in fridge.

pharmaco lecture. received lots of presents, there were eatables such as eesang's green tea (pie?), christina's cornflakes, xinran's marshmellows, and jw + entian's sweets (did i miss out anyone??) oh yes, and my* brownies.

(* made actually by my good friend wang... i helped to mix the contents only. haha)

anyway, seems like the pharmaco lecturer was in a good mood today.. although he got stern with us once. but he let us off early like 10:45! anyway, i ate another 1/4 of the sandwich during the 15 minutes break and gave another 1/4 of the "made with love" sandwich to constance, after the guys rejected it. muhahhahhaha!!

then went down to science foyer to help out with the pharmacy bazaar. manned the BMI machines from 12pm-2pm. quite fun. took a reading - i'm darn overweight. should lose like at least 10 kg. argh....

You are at moderate risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes.

To achieve a healthy BMI and reduce your helath risks, eat a well-balanced diet low in fat and high in dietary fiber, and engage in regular physical activity.

oh and concurrently, i sorta "deejayed" for the bazaar. talked alot of crap to no one in particular, played songs. luckily kiki came around 1pm and saved my ass, it made the whole show a little bit more interesting. suddenly song dedications from people who had not been near the dj booth popped up.

later came lab, 2pm-4pm. quite easy, FTIR. but dr koh expects a "full report" on whatever waveforms we see. oh gosh. luckily they haven't taught that subject yet, which can buy me more time. ended early, hence went to the bazaar and slacked till 5pm.

went to meet nuan at 5pm.... we went to NUH for volunteer work, as usual, as part of our wednesday routine. thing was, it was chinese new year celebrations and alot of volunteers from the children's section popped up. after putting up decorations and giving out the oranges and red packets to the patients, we went throughout the sections of the ward, me playing the guitar, with the others making a motley choir, with two songs to serenade the bored patients. i considered my playing a horrid flop, but when i saw the mood that was hanging in the air and all the smiles that the patients wore, it made me feel better, that i could actually do something with my music. and i was glad.

went to the children's ward too. brings back memories of my 2-week stay at NUH during my operation. most of the rooms are still as i left it.

left NUH at 7:30pm... nuan still had a bouquet of flowers to deliver to BTC (bukit timah campus) and so we left... almost got lost in the sprawling campus. the guy (yes the recipient is a guy) must have been quite surprised to see a couple delivering the flowers.

took 66 home... bought dinner. 9pm.

valentine's day has just started...

2007-02-09T06:52:00.000+08:00

My 22th St. Valentine's Day

ooooooooh valentine's day is coming!!!

haha, cupid is waiting to gpmg his arrows, collect 'em all!!

although i still take the common opinion that valentine's day is but another disguised attempt to rob poor folks (guys) out of their reserve monies (i.e. $$ saved from their hardworking days at NS and tuition and other jobs), nevertheless, the dark side is still strong...

received a $50 voucher from this floral shop. the voucher was addressed "specially to nus pharmaceutical society", by some weird method of thinking, why did they choose to target poor NUS students, esp. pharmacy students, when they could have nailed those richer fellas in med or dentistry instead (disclaimer: i'm not saying all med/dent students are rich) or the even richer folks in shenton way. and that pharmacy only has like 15 guys per class and most of my class guys aren't attached?!??!?!? well, maybe they think that some rich prodigal son exists in nus waiting to be milked.

like statistics 101 from yuantai, they have like only a 15-20% chance of snagging a guy to buy their stuff. lol. poor business strategy. haha. in the end, some guy (whom shall remain anonymous) had an excellent idea of converting most of those vouchers into paper airplanes. haha.

whatever the case, they must think that us poor NUS students are full of money. for although they are giving a $50 discount off their stuff, one rose costs $160! this is with some musician hand-delivering the single flower (they provide islandwide delivery) and perhaps playing some suiting melody with his violin.

i would love to be that musician, except that i can't play the violin. bummer. but, provides an idea for next valentines. ^$$^ haha... imagine the salary he's getting!! roses sell for like hell cheap in nus.. so he must be earning like $100+ for each delivery. wowee~!!!

damn.. why didn't they invent the portable electone?? bleah.

***

must finish project valentine by this sunday!!! jiayouz!!!

2007-02-06T20:19:00.000+08:00

random ramblings

a look at the modules:
i have 3 labs this sem!! how shack.

pr2104 pharm analysis is quite simple. so far. very much like a-level chemistry and physics loosely strung together. two funny lecturers (ok, funny as in lame) lecturers Dr Koh and Dr Chan. although their lectures are damn boring and their pracs are qian pon (worthwhile of deliberately skipping), it is one topic which i can understand and find their practical easy to do (whats so difficult about following BP?)

pr2105 pharm microbiology is probably the mod i will get C for this sem. i can't understand what i'm doing in the prac, i think i'm gonna fail the prac test... staining, looking under the microscope, drawing, serial dilution, melting agar... all these seem mere procedures that i just follow blindly without giving much in-depth consideration. theory is pretty technical... also boring. although prof chan lai wah is very kind. but getting lamer in her jokes. =p

pr3107 pharm prac II is the module that had gotten everyone sitting up in the upright position. lecturer (?) david woo is notorious amongst last year's pre-reg students as being one of the toughest testers for pre-reg around. and now he's come to test us... he hails from (unity?) pharmacy and apparently lifts his notes from the textbook which he encourages us to read before lesson (friday), gives us the tutorial questions (friday) and teaches us during next monday. lilian wong is still ok. i think... since david's been such a sob that he's practically taking all the flak that we can probably hurl at him. accent's a problem too, but i can see he's adjusting gradually to the asian student mentality. still, this is one guy you don't wanna play cards in front of (you can do that with dr eric chan though). the stuff they teach is interesting, but very heavy. gotta stock up soon.

i still think david woo isn't that bad. there are worse people out there esp in army. i should say that he is reasonable. but during tutorials he will act the customer from hell who will nail your sorry ass for everything. "i insist on having a ear drop". "how do u teach your customer to instill eye drops?" but i admit it's quite good training since prob we're gonna face customers from hell and beyond next time and by that time you're already half-dead from deflecting all the darn arrows.

lsm2101 metabolism and regulation is taught by 3 different professors, none of which i remember the names. one for carbo, one for fat, one for protein and probably nucleic acids. crazy!!! very dry. memorizing work. enough.

pp2106 pharmacology I is taught by a lecturer, a former pharmacist who was once the chairman of nusps. quite a nice guy, but really needs to have more tact when he lectures and not treat the class like a jc class. or medical school class. his experiments are nice and slack, everything's provided for, no set up, no mixing of solutions, just press button, inject and observe. how cool is that!

2007-01-28T23:39:00.000+08:00

PR2101: Dosage form Design - Gels.

A gel is a colloidal system in which a porous network of interconnected nanoparticles spans the volume of a liquid medium. In general, gels are apparently solid, jelly-like materials. Both by weight and volume, gels are mostly liquid in composition and thus exhibit densities similar to liquids, however have the structural coherence of a solid. An example of a common gel is sodium alginate. Many gels display thixotropy - they become fluid when agitated, but resolidify when resting.

Thanks to constance for the idea!! =)

2007-01-28T13:47:00.000+08:00

The Attack of the Evangelista Part II

ok, first, the disclaimer, i'm not really against christianity or catholicism or any other religion that evangelises i.e. have people coming to you spontaneously and say "let's be friends" or "lets play together at my church" or "have u heard the good news" or some other funny moniker.

yup, it is more the people who do this that i'm more disgusted with. they are very easy to spot, once they open their mouth. things like "church" and "Jesus" and "Christ" will tell u more or less that the guy's an evan. (Unless they scream something like, OH, JESUS CHRIST!!! i almost won the lottery!!)

then until recently, they have resorted to house visits, much like MPs. i think they are not very welcome. they visited my mum once but she said she wasn't free and so they came again. and this time i answered the door. what do two middle-aged woman want from me? i thought as i peered through the keyhole. they don't look like saleswomen.. who don't come on Sundays...

then they asked to see my mother. i asked for what. they were quite reluctant to say..
then i asked them where are they from. "oh we are from the church at and we're coming to discuss the bible with your mother and how people don't believe the bible and how we can make people believe in it (SMILE).

oh gosh, i din't knew mum was a bible freak. maybe not - nah, most unlikely. so i made up some excuse and ok, fine - it was all smiles all the way and i declined them politely, LYING saying that we had no time and we were going out somewhere and blah blah blah some rubbish. damn, i hate lying.

so they said, nvm its ok, we'll be back next time when you are free. @#$%... have to meet them again. i hope they won't be chased by my mother with the broom next time.

yup i think although evangelism may or may not be a part of my friends' lives, some whom are christian/catholic, they do it sparingly - even not at all - to me. which is fine. (well, if they are such fervent preachers, i probably don't contact them much either). they often invite me to their gatherings - christian in nature, especially during christmas. and sometimes, maybe that rare incident among a hundred invitations, i go (though not alone) and find out its a christmas party-cum-a normal session with all the prayings and stuff.. but i don't participate, it's ok. been to two catholic weddings, they're generally fine, as in they don't force u to participate in the singing and stuff if u don't wish to. it's a joyous occasion, anyway.

yup. main point - i am not against christians or catholics. well maybe evangelism. as long as you don't befriend me for the sole function of spreading religion. i am very happy with my religion, although i'm not a firm believer. but i don't want others to meddle in my affairs. imagine if i went up to someone just coming out from church and preach buddhism? or taoism?

hmm maybe next time they come i can put a loudspeaker outside my house and when those two dudes come by again, before i open the door, i'll play the "NAH-MO-AH-MI-TUO-FO" chant, put on saffron robes, open the door, "...right, let us talk about the Sutra of Eternal Bliss now?"

2007-01-21T02:55:00.000+08:00

peranakan paradise

went with nuan to this place, Ivins, at 29 Binjai Park to eat dinner.

(29 Binjai Park? where the hell is that??)

it's a peranakan restaurant which serves quite authentic food. at cheap prices (relatively). its located off dunearn road. (hmm all njcians and hcjcians and whatever school-ians that ply that long stretch of road from jalan anak bukit to newton should know that.)

(reallY??? i've never heard of the place before, even after 2 years of my life taking buses there!)

well can't blame either, i've never heard of the place before . t'was till i went online and googled "top ten places to eat in singapore" or something like that when this restaruant came into mind.

anyway, the restaruant was crowded, but it was on a saturday, and it was dinnertime when we went. quite a family place with kids all over and families of all nationalities. business is brisk. but even though i had initially expected some looooooooong waiting like the infamous sharksfin soup restarurants, it turned out fine and the maitre'd just let us in like about 15 minutes.

ala-carte restaruant (there's a nice lunch set for $5.20 though) but portions are small. but sinfully good and authentic. the curry has a smell to it, prob that of coconut milk. everything has a smell, not like the chap chai rice stalls where the curry smells like processed. stale. portions are small. good for her, just enough for me, so it was enough (we ordered about 4 dishes).

total bill: $23 nett for two people.
rating: *** (good enough to impress without burning a hole in your pocket! )
food: ****
ambience: ***1/2

(how do we go there?)

u can take 151 and alight 3 stops after passing KAP macdonalds. then find binjai road and walk along it, you can find the restaruant by the roadside.

2007-01-20T00:33:00.000+08:00

disappointed.

never wanted it to turn out like this.
never knew that all the effort that i put in could backfire.
felt really sien. stupid. for putting in so much time.
from now on i shall stay in my own dream world and not meddle elsewhere.

wtf.

2007-01-17T22:38:00.000+08:00

How to Screw Up your Practical, Part Two

had my first pharmaceutical analysis lab today.

task: to do 2 limit tests on... whatever ion (i think sulphate) on some KMnO4.

let me see if i remember:

procedure:
1) standard soln: put 15 + 1.5 ml of standard sulphate soln + 1 ml of BaCl2 solution into big fat test tube. add 15 drops (5ml) of some strong acetic acid.
the test soln should not be more cloudy than this in order to meet BP stds..

2) test soln: weigh 0.75g of KMnO4 solid using weighing balance and add 25 ml of water and 3 ml of alcohol into the thing, stir. then put on hot surface until the thing boils and turns brown, then wait for about 2-3 minutes. then wait for the thing to cool down (aid cooling if necessary), then filter the shitlike mess, get 12ml of filtrate add 3 ml of water and to this 15ml:
add 1.5 ml of standard sulphate soln + 1 ml of BaCl2 solution into big fat test tube. add 15 drops (5ml) of some strong acetic acid.

sounds easy? haha.. then can someone explain to me why my water levels of both test and std solns were always different. stupid. redid one experiment because of that. so i did 3 expts in all, running out of time, with the 3rd one under the close scrutiny of Dr Koh and Dr Chan and all the lab techs. think they must have noticed i was in close time trouble, treating me like a VIP: "are you ok? can you manage? is everything all right? do u need help in cleaning up?" arrghh. not that i don't appreciate but it's really darn paiseh and shitty la. lang bei as they say in chinese. just feel like abandoning the whole darn thing but somehow, i just went on.

then as Dr Koh was explaining to me some stuff and asking me which test tube had the more opalescent solution and suddenly my carebears ringtone came on!!!! ARGGH!! immediately balls shrink!! then checked. nuan. omg. but think she (Dr Koh) smiled a bit too so nothing. lolz. so paiseh!!!! shit man. lesson: never to put corny ringtones on your phone. and silent the darn phone in practicals.

i'd said i'd screw up the first practical in every module:
ppda: went in half-asleep.
physical pharm: was doing with some girl. got alot of help along the way.
dispensing II: almost died.

shall sleep early today.

2007-01-17T00:15:00.000+08:00

Tuesdays Are Tiring

Long Day today. morning: got caught in traffic jam. late. arrived in lt26 without breakfast and sitting to a very cold jingwen, who was also late. we sat 2nd row from bottom. damn cold, like fridge. i think i'm getting sick.

4 hour break. bought files, got jab and slacked with jason, eesang, and ch. talking about smoking and booze. new change of topics for once.

lab. major screw up. kept washing away the microorganisms from my slide with either too much water (because there were so few of them), or putting a whole swab of E. coli such that they cover each other and u can't see individual cells. how stupid. or a combination of both when doing the Gram staining. its like i have a whole colony of pink among certain dots of purple.

horrible la when putting my glass slide between the (what's that thing called?) two glass rods, i accidentally knocked the freaking glass slab over when i was doing washing! and it went into the sink with a piang! then i was wondering whether to salvage the slide. maybe can still see some microorganisms. ha.

ziehl-neelsen stain can't see anything. damn. the other staining procedure still can see something. haha. i think i'm darn lousy at practical. every practical - every first practical - from sec sch to JC to uni: PPDA, physical pharm, dispensing: i will screw it up. maybe it's the shaky hands, butterfingers. maybe it's no muscle memory. whatever. i will just screw the first practical in a module up.

then afterwards was meeting for pharm yep. quite fruitful! managed to obtain some contacts to jumpstart the project. ha. but returned home darn tired.

2007-01-14T22:52:00.000+08:00

already thinking about next hols

this hols came and went... and i've just finished the first week of school... eventfully (well, not quite).

hmmm... lets see if i read this post 4.5 months later.. but who cares.

this weekend is boring... just kept on doing emed stuff to prepare for brown bagging. i'm taking on a very slack role compared to the others, but hell that's what publicity is, isn't it? got a bigger headache regarding the video, can't save. we've filled it with so much goodies (videos, pictures, effects, music) that my computer can't take it. according to my uncle it requires about 20GB of full space to save it!! wth. where am i gonna find that space man.

anyway, just thought of going to places, at the most cheapest (backpacker) rates, during summer vacation. here's some.

1) taiwan, taipei (tag along with ipsf-ers then pangseh them and tour the city while they have the boring talks. muhahhaha. evil.)

2) australia, perth - same like what leo and his tsb buddies went for. seems like fun and a good chance to wear windbreakers in the 10-20 C weather. or go swimming. haha.

3) malaysia - it's right next to us, but i dunno what exactly is inside after 22 years of my life. heck, that goes for johor bahru even. other than that the city is full of muggers targeting singaporeans as stated in new paper. better grab choon han or yeelian as tour guide if i choose this option. haha.
maybe i'll go a tour of western malaysia: tour buses from west coast up to alor star and down the east coast. or the beaches of langkawi or redang. or make a climb to kota kinabaloo. wooo!

4) phuket, thailand - it's not tsunami season, i reckon it's ok, i hope. leo went there too just before the tsunami struck, quite a nice place to let your hair down.

then if all else fails, there's still:

5) sentosa
6) aloha changi
7) ubin. haven't tried the southern islands yet...

who to go with? hmm... haven't decided yet. any takers?

and for this, i shall strive to put my preceptorship in the first slot!!

2007-01-13T17:25:00.000+08:00

the 6 types of girls that you should avoid
(from funkygrad.com)

1. Miss Money-NOT-Penny
To her, it's all about dollars. She's a Material Girl living in a material world. She incurs extremely high maintenance costs, expecting a man to finance her entire life, from shopping at Gucci to drinks at One Rochester.

2. Miss Moonlight-Walks-On-The-Beach
She lives in a fantasy world of romantic movies and romance novels. She is waiting for her Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet and nothing will do except for the perfect fairy tale ending. She has absolutely no idea that real life consists of paying bills and cleaning toilets.

3. Miss Too-High-Expectations
She thinks that she is worth more than everything you can give her. Unless you're Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, Einstein and Frank Sinatra all rolled into one perfect package, you won't have enough good looks, money, intelligence, social skills, or [insert trait here] to date her.

4. Miss Center-of-The-University
Everything revolves around her. Brought up as a princess, she only cares about herself and nothing else. She has to win at all costs. If your car is new, hers is a little newer, if your grades are good, hers are a little better, if a guy in class steals a glance at her, she thinks he wants to sleep with her.

5. Miss Boyfriend-Addict
Within a day after a break up she's on the prowl. She has never been single for more than a week and within 10 minutes after your first date, she's already planning your wedding and naming your kids. Maybe all of her friends are attached so her biological clock is ticking. She doesn't care who the guy is, just as long as he is breathing.

6. Miss Needs-a-lot-of-attention
A close friend of Miss Boyfriend-Addict, this gal becomes an extension of you, and your buddies know to get you out on an outing, they've got to get her first. You will never need to call her because she's calls you 10 times a day "just to hear your voice." She's clingy, needy and so compulsively agonising that you are serously considering to leave her for "someone better."