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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Germans and their skewed humour

Hole dug in the middle of a nature walk, filled with water and covered with floating leaves. Oh dear, but those poor dogs!!

Wenky
12:36 PM
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waiting room prank

Excellent! An elderly couple (actors) in a room with prank victims. Lights go off, elderly couple bangs and moans. No real sex, obviously, but hilarious.

Wenky
12:34 PM
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Fake Glass door prank

Simple, yet with great results!

Wenky
12:31 PM
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Collation of pranks

BRILLIANT!

Wenky
12:30 PM
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Never Scare a Brother

When pranks go wrong .. oh dear. I really might behave like that. Get too aggressive when frightened.

Wenky
12:26 PM
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Head in portable toilet

Muahahahahaha, another one! More benign than the skeleton prank, but it's interesting how people usually freeze and stare for half a second before TOTALLY freaking out.

Wenky
12:24 PM
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A Ride To Hell

I am SO evil, getting my daily enjoyment from watching people scared to death. But this is a crazy prank, especially when there's a graveyard just opposite the road.

Wenky
12:23 PM
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Monday, August 28, 2006

Humour therapy

Yep, I'm back at it again. Instead of torrents of jokes via email!

Wenky
7:00 PM
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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Darth Vader

EW will find this to be of interest. Enjoy! =)

Wenky
6:50 PM
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Monday, August 21, 2006

Miss Swan - Dancing Queen

My sister actually thinks this is funny.

Whatever happened to good comedy? =(

Wenky
11:32 PM
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I might never get the leisure to do such odd things again. I still remember the flood of jokes I sent via email to the whole class back in JC. Wenky = strange.

You Are 50% Normal

While some of your behavior is quite normal...
Other things you do are downright strange
You've got a little of your freak going on
But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

I.e. I'm precariously perched, and will soon fall either way. Nerd or curd. (Curd?? WTF.)
You Are 56% Gross

You're more than a little gross, but probably no more gross than the average person.
Maybe it's time to drop some of those disgusting habits that could eventually embarrass you!

That's interesting - always thought I'd be nearly 100% gross. Maybe my bacteriophobia has gotten the best of me at last.

Your Driving Is is: 72% Male, 28% Female

According to studies, you generally drive like a typical male.
You're confident in your driving skills, and hardly any situation gets the better of you.
And while you may have a few tickets under your belt, you're still a very good driver.

Duh. Woe be to those who meet me on my bad days.
You Are 64% Control Freak

You are a pretty major control freak, though you may not know it.
While your confidence is inspiring, your bossy ways tend to scare people off.

Yes, I do know it, somewhat. I wouldn't say control "freak" though - thats, like, extreme.
Your Brain is 60% Female, 40% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female
You are both sensitive and savvy
Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed
But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

So I drive like a guy, and think like a girl? Someone tell me how that works.

Your Stress Level is: 64%

You are prone to stress, and you're probably even pretty stressed right now.
Life's problems seem to pile up on you, and this often makes you feel depressed and burned out.
Learn to take time to relax and enjoy life, even if things are stressful. It's the only wa you'll get through the bad times.

Tell me something new, perchance?

You Will Die at Age 73

You're pretty average when it comes to how you live...
And how you'll die as well.

Alas!! No no no! I don't want to die a prawn in bed! I'm so going to die in my prime, while on stage giving a major talk that's being aired live on BBC, Fox, etc etc, dramatically drop dead and leave an imprint in history. Or, if I continue gaining weight, I'll be leaving an imprint on the concrete floor instead.

You Are More Mild Than Wild

You're confident, and you really aren't concerned with how "hot" you are.
Other people's ideas of what's sexy don't concern you. And this is exactly what makes you attractive.

Sugar-coaters.
You Are 58% Evil

You are evil, but you haven't yet mastered the dark side.
Fear not though - you are on your way to world domination.

I obviously need lessons from EW.

Wenky
10:11 PM
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Sunday, August 20, 2006

It's been years since I bought orchids for myself - not the silly Dendrobiums, mind. Finally saw something that really tested my self-restraint, and ended up buying 1 for myself, 1 for Yx.



With a 10c coin for size comparison - that's the entire plant, together with a bunch of flowers! Muahahahaha .. can't wait to show tto my parents!

Wenky
11:39 PM
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Says Brownie, the Big Baby.


Wenky
11:38 PM
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Still very ill today. More ill, in fact.

Wenky
10:43 AM
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The lows:

1) A tutor told me on Friday that doctors will never be chosen to be health ministers - simply because they are too soft-hearted. This really shone through today. The long and short of it is, my iPod nano's irreversably damaged, and it culminated in a feeling so difficult, I had no idea where to grasp it from. Such are the trials we go through. There was no need to even start being angry at the guilty (it was in part my fault as well), and what started off as a generally pissed-off mood quickly washed over to evolve into alarm when the tears came, pity when the words of remorse came, and complete disorientation at the sight of genuine, heartfelt anguish. Truth be told, I can live without it, and in this way, I really could "afford" to have it spoilt - what was I to do? Tried my best to dry it off, feigned that it worked, but each time she saw me it was those same words - that she'd pay for it, that perhaps to someone else would have been acceptable, but no. I never want to become that sort of person. Perhaps in the distant future, an iPod would be but a purchase of whim and fancy to me - but now, for someone else, the stakes are so much higher. I'm doing what I can to remain human in spite of disease and death everyday, and it troubles me that even such a basic act of humanity pulled me into deep thought. Is it really that difficult?

And so here I am. It's been a full day, but the issue still weighs heavily on me. There was no better way of handling the situation, and I'm trying to accept the finality.

Sometimes, things are much easier when there's someone for you to blame.

2) I'm quite ill today. Quite, quite ill. And irritable, grouchy, and irritable, and grouchy. I fucking keep getting ill before the start of each posting, I hate it hate it hate it!!! See. Irritable and grouchy.

3) Trawled u-tube for some of Celine's vegas show snippets, and was extremely upset. A childish behavior. Definitely. I've never wanted something this much - not since those days of boyhood when I wanted that set of stupid sea monkey growing kit or the dumb light microscope set. And the blues totally came in the context of what happened earlier today - why am I getting upset over not being able to watch a concert, when others have so much more to worry about? Upset, mingled with shame. You don't get a chance to see her vegas concert everyday, but then again, there are plenty more things you don't get to do everyday.

The highs: Well, not High high, but a reprieve from all of today's nastiness.

1) Went to a party thrown by Yx's colleague, who's Greek. And ooooh, were we surprised!! Imagine a bachelor, long hair, coffee and cigarettes (and nothing else) for lunch. What would you expect?

We were treated to world-class Greek cuisine.

It was quite a global gathering - Australians, Germans, Greeks, English, Chinese etc. etc. Plenty of meats, savoury delights (the pilaf "pasta" in beef sauce was a runaway favourite for me and Yx), salamis, plenty of cheese, tomato salad with feta (I think) and of course, loads of booze. I particularly enjoyed his shirt, which said "The liver is EVIL, and needs to be PUNISHED". And another one of his cranky antics - he filled his washing machine with ice, and used it to store all the booze!

On a side note, Yx's Prof came late and is still dissed that I beat him at bowling, and remains convinced that I lied about being a greenhorn (I WAS).

2) Haha, this is sooo frivolous, but it definitely upped my evening. One of the Chinese girls at the party kept shooting glances at me, and finally confessed that I look like one of those Hong Kong movie actors. Someone else said that years ago, but I never found out who the hell was trying to imitate me. =p

Wenky
1:32 AM
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Vogue

Yet another classic! This is the first version of Vogue I saw way back in 1998, when Yamaha wanted us to do a rendition of her piece (the shame!!). Choreography for this one, from one of the MTV awards, is really the best yet.

Nice memories...

Wenky
1:03 AM
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Emotions (1992)

Here we go, the HORRID M.C. song I've been trying in vain to sing. Forget about the 5th octave notes; I can't even manage to transit the first "You" that's 1 octave higher into the subsequent "got me feeling emotions". =( But still .. WOW. In her heydays. What the heck happened to her eh?

Wenky
12:38 AM
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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Alright, this is going to be difficult to put into words. It's just some stuff that's been bugging me for the last few weeks. Shan't try now, maybe later when the thought comes.

Had a jolly good time at the welcome tea last night, even though I was tired to the bone. Turnout was way beyond expectations - almost 40! Only thing was that no one thought of bringing laptop speakers, so when we played the embedded videos in our powerpoint slide, it was a total mess. A loud silence, with peoples' attentions rivetted onto the moving screen. Well, at least that's done for now!

More irritating ward rounds today, which lasted 4 hours yesterday. Really fatigued. Fatigued, fatigued, fatigued. I woke today in a stupor, knowing that yet another long day lay ahead. You know, all I want is someone close that I can hang out with in hospital. Hurts, when everyone else has a friend to lunch with, and you sit with people you're not really close to.

Wenky
7:11 AM
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Tuesday, August 15, 2006



*After watching "Spanglish", when the chef was munching on his delicious-looking sandwich*

"Oooooooooh, yummm!! I want!"
"I know how to make, want me to make for you tonight?"

"But it takes such a long time to make!"
"Not really, I can make for you easily tonight ..."

"But it takes such a long time to make!"
(Puzzled) "Huh? Why?"

"It took you 4 years to make this for me ..."

Wenky
6:32 AM
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Yes, totally bland.

When you're simply heading towards your goal at the end of long, long path; little rifts here and there, scattered marsh and desert along the way; you see an unscalable cliff right before you reach this place that you've been trudging for the last 5 years to reach. A crumbling cliff. You can fall to your death and splatter your innards on the jagged rocks below - ah, the stark reminder of mortality! You can get caught by the many branches as you fall, trapped neither here nor there, too exhausted to pick yourself back up and when those jagged rocks down below seem like a welcome end. You could hold back all those tears and reach the top, only to find so many more of crumbling cliffs beyond.

When you've come this far, with plains of desert behind and an oasis at the top of the cliff - temporary relief, yes, but to turn back? To what? To having your whithered corpse bitten away by the sand and blown to dust?
And to give up and bail? To where?

Picking at cherries along the way, dancing my little dances along this desert path. Meeting other wanderers who cross my way - they have their own journeys to make, their own deserts to cross; glad of a little companionship along this way. A little reprieve along this path - a small, rapidly-drying pool perhaps. They are but little perks to bide my time, till I face this cliff at the end. And all the time, I'm treading this well-worn path, a constant reminder. If others before me could get there, why can't I? No corpses along the way, but you know inside that there were, only to be gnawed to dust and blown away.

Wenky
6:14 AM
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Monday, August 14, 2006

OK, that was quite some angst there.

Something really odd that's worthy of note - I've been having 2 consecutive nights of dreams (I usually don't dream at all or don't remember them), and both involve phobias.

Saturday night - going up 140+ storeys in a horrid elevator, with people I know all in the lift. Obviously I was freaking out, but I couldn't possibly start wailing in front of them right? What's more, the freaking lift took 5 MINUTES to get up.

Last night - Was in a hypnopompic state, the natural physiological hallucinations you get between sleeping and waking up. There were huge bright orange caterpillars crawling on my blanket, so I threw off my sheets and finally woke at 4.30am, shivering from the cold.

Awful.

Wenky
7:07 AM
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The weekend, once again, has mysteriously poofed. It's so awful that everyone's running on this cycle. You get people piping up on the Monday Blues - actually acknowledging it, glorifying it, as if it is an unavoidable and necessary part of life. It isn't. It's artificial, it's unhealthy, and most importantly - it's so totally self-inflicted. I don't see why people can jump out of their seats to fix, say, a software bug; and yet, bugs in life like these are simply taken for granted, like it is an unavoidable part of life. Haven't you gotten sick of such a cycle yet? Almost 20 years of this this crap, every single freaking year. Perhaps it's time we took more notice of school/workplace health, before working society degenerates to that of Japan where despite hard-push tactics of improving workplace mental health, you still get so many of them going, "Oooops! I tripped and fell off. The top of the 20-storey building actually." We need a collaborative effort to plush up these Mondays. Hold a TGIM (Thank God It's Monday) bash, The Singapore Monday Sales, Weekly UNproductivity Day, or Wake-Late Mondays and Dress-down Mondays.

OK, got that out of my system. Just feeling generally grouchy today - woke at 4.30am for the THIRD day in a row, with an aching neck to boot! There's nothing to read on the plant forums, BBC's full of Lebanese updates, I'm facing yet another week of decrepit patients, a horrifying 2 weeks of screaming spoilt brats at KK looms ahead, and my adipocyte hyperplasia is seriously alarming me. The lilies on my table aren't blooming well (they got dehydrated), there are so many things to organise this week, and there's a test on Friday.

What a wonderful week,
What a wonderful world.

I need excitement in life! Kbox! Skating! Saunas! Whatever!!

Ti orh orh, bei lor hor.

Wenky
6:49 AM
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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Starring:
Tracy Jie-Jie
Montyelm
Ang Ku Kueh
Smartypants
Yx
and me!

Spent a rather hysterical 4 hours at Kbox on Friday night. I must say, it's not really that much cheaper, the microphone's terrible and the SILLY STAFF kept walking in on us. (= no privacy) At least it did away with the startling Mama-san decor we had at Partyworld.

Indeed, tonnes of videos. Most aren't terribly clear though, due to the low lighting, but enough to embarrass quite a few people. Well actually, mostly Tracy jie-jie. Yx's MTV of him singing his melancholic birthday song while waving a plastic cake-knife wildly about is reminiscent of some severely psychotic person.

Oh, and also the vids of Montyelm dancing to Ai4 Shen2 and the F4's Liu2 Xing1 Yu3 finale.

Sad though, English songs are obviously lacking in all these establishments. The best I could do was Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and some duets with Smartypants like Hoobastank's "The Reason". Ooooh and the oldies! Crap. My Chinese repertoire has a clear-cut stop line - 1996. Anything before that, fine. Stuff like A*mei's songs, Teresa Tang and all the dear golden oldies.

I'm now entertaining the notion of broadcasting the birthday song episode for the world to view, muahahahahahahaha. Perhaps I shall blackmail Tracy.

Wenky
12:19 AM
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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Not good. The blues are here.

Wenky
7:18 AM
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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

In the face of looming doom tomorrow during ward rounds and all, a beautiful stage was set today to remind me of hope, beauty and memories.

~Morning~
Tiong Bahru market. Goodness me, that was EONS ago. Every sunday, without fail, those fish-hunting trips. Ken still had his BMW back then, and we indulged in TFH (Tropical Fish Hobbyist), driftwood, and Serangoon North. Yep, even before my Betta adventures - planted tanks, lungfish, mini hamsters, English budgerigars, frogs and tiger barbs. Rose (Ken's ex) and Radon (my favourite trained Budgie). Prata outside my place with Ken and Steven. Steven's birthday party, frequent coffee at Starbucks near Delta Road and his group of friends.

On a side note, I went for the full month celebration for Ken's baby boy today! Eeeeeeps. It was totally surreal, somehow. Friends getting babies. OK, granted that he's 6 years older, but STILL!

~Evening~
Somehow I managed to dig out an old compilation CD by a stroke of luck. It included such tracks as "Never Ever" (All Saints), "Genie In A Bottle" (Christina Aguilera), "Backstreet's Back" and "I'm Missing You" (Backstreet Boys).

These were the days of Clementi Gym (where I bumped into Tooh FS one fine day), my old pair of Roces Barcelona skates (mine were silver, not green), playing in mud at kent ridge park at 10pm, swimming in the sea off Sentosa at 12am and splashing around inside the Merlion fountain at 2am.



Such fond memories! I have no idea where all that time came from, no idea at all. And I'd never have dreamed that I'd be taking this path one day - no, I'm not one of those self-professing "I've been wanting to do this the very day I was born" kind of person. Perhaps, those were days where I had HOLIDAYS. Real ones. Stretches of 2-3 months, when you could really hang out with friends, and honestly tell them that "let's meet tomorrow night" every single damned night. Times when you get home at 4am after a whole night of skating and cycling, and waking at 11am the next day only to get to the gym at noon, then meet up again at 8pm. It was pure indulgence, nothing less.

Days when life was really multi-faceted. Days of silly school camps. Days of bitching at school.

This entry's really truncated - words could never describe the depth of emotions I'm drowning in right now. It's overwhelming, empowering, and positively radiating. All of a sudden everything I've ever done seemed so possible - just fact, without mystery.

Wenky
10:53 PM
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I am SO IMPRESSED with Room For Dessert, a cake place at Waterloo street. It's quite an old establishment owned and run by several friends, who came down for our Lindy practice tonight and surprised all of us with a wedge of carrot cake each! Fucking HEAVENLY. Omg, couldn't get enough of the cake, even with the cramps (Yes, it looks set to continue into Day 4 BTW).



Was just looking at their website for the first time, and oooooh! Honestly I'm ashamed - never knew they were so talented. Some of the cakes look too damn good to eat! Look at theeeeesse gorgeous ones!

Yes, this whole thing is CAKE.


And this as well!


Cake in the shape of a milk carton...


Love those tuxedo strawberries!


Muahahahaha, now I know where to get fabulous birthday cakes from! Shameless plugging, I know, but I owe this to them at least for not having patronised the place for the last 2 years - if you do decide to try them out (the carrot cake is a MUST-TRY), mention that you've been sent by me or Yx. No promises on monetary benefits, but I'm pretty darn sure the service and portions at least will be just that wee bit extraordinary. =) Oh, and most of them being Lindy Hoppers, the service probably will inherently be good anyway!

Wenky
12:41 AM
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Monday, August 07, 2006

Finally went to see a doc about the tummy, and she very wisely explained that my oral Buscopan didn't work cos my tummy has totally given up, and isn't absorbing anymore. I ended up getting an injection of 2 ampoules of Buscopan, which helped - FOR A WHILE. The freaking cramps are back now!!! This is extremely nasty. No more cold bak zang for me. This might actually carry over to tomorrow. Oh please, no, have mercy.

Anyway, I'm ASHAMED of myself. Intended to break in the new Charlestons with a lovely Lindy dance, but what really happened was that my sis drove my car today - along with my Supadance pair. Had to dance at the salsa club with the Charlestons instead. =\ Tummy was still extremely crampy, so I did a courtesy dance with 3 of the girls I went with (hoho .. casanova eh??) before sitting alone for the rest of the night, feeling all glum. Grrrr .. I don't know how I ended up being the only lead tonight. Yx, my sis Xuan and 2 of Yx's lab-mates were there. Nic, our ex-CG's resident salsa guru is having a night call tonight, so he couldn't come. And everyone else seems to be doing their SIP too. In any case, the atmosphere tonight was MUCH BETTER. So much less awkward than last week, with a group of total strangers. Yeah, pretty much spent the night with tummy cramps in the salsa bar, while watching the 3 girls getting whisked away by other men to dance. Bleargh.

Wenky
11:36 PM
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Alas. It has NOT resolved. Woke at 4.30am and spent a horribly productive 40 minutes on the throne. The sequence went like this:

Cramps
Gurgling sounds in tummy
Very horrid kind of flatulence - gurgling and sputtering
Several mls of liquid - again, no form.
2 minutes of inactivity
Back to cramps again, and the cycle starts over.

For the first time in living memory, the failsafe cocktail of Buscopan + charcoal has utterly failed me. I'm pretty sure it's not a renal stone either - no loin-to-groin pain, urine's normal, and I simply guzzle too much water. Feeling very drained, tired and upset right now, I don't know if I should risk going for lessons. Pretty sure I'll be fine for an hour or so, and mentally I'm still quite alright, despite having very interrupted sleep (Cramps woke me from sleep several times, pain score 7-9/10). Disgusting.

Wenky
6:25 AM
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Sunday, August 06, 2006

San Francisco Jitterbugs - Promo Video

Oooooh really cool vid!

Wenky
11:54 PM
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Help!!!!! The abdo pain is STILL here, despite 2 Buscopan tabs. Time to stuff myself with charcoal. Still with intermittent diarrhoea, which has no form whatsoever - just splatter. The pains are more like cramps (Yx had a field day taking videos of me in lithotomy position, faking labour) and come on whenever I contract the abdominal muscles or take food. Lasts for 5-10 seconds, with variable baseline rest time from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. No radiation, just cramps cramps and more cramps. No fever, but had an afternoon of chills and malaise.

On examination, there's tenderness in the suprapubic area and no rebound tenderness. Bowel sounds slightly reduced, no tinkling sounds, and unremarkable otherwise.

Words like appendicitis, pancreatitis, volvulus and ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms keep flitting through my head.

Wenky
11:31 PM
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I don't usually get excited from buying shoes - that's a hallmark of the XX kind - but this!! I've been eyeing this exact pair for 3 years now, and finally bought myself a pair of Charlestons!! The shop owner was visibly relieved that someone finally took it home, after being on the shelf for all these years. What's more, I got it at 75% of the list price, thanks to mom who called the boss up. It really isn't a bad pair, considering this isn't the authentic Beyer's Charlestons that swingers use.

Yx also bought a gorgeous pair with 2.5" heels, it's champagne with 2 black stripes. The lucky prat ... she got her pair SPONSORED by her elder brother, who decided that an hour or 2 of teaching by Yx credits a $70 sponsorship. (!^$%@#^#) Yx's a follow, BTW, but she can lead much better than most salsa guys on the floor *snigger*.

Anyway, decided that I'm only going use the Charleston shoes strictly for Lindy. Currently we're already making quite a show of changing out from street shoes into the Supadance's, so I'm going a step further by changing out from Supadance into Charlestons when Lindy music comes on. =p

OK, plaqued by severe diarrhoea this morning - it's the very watery kind, coupled with intermittent abdominal colick at the epigastric and suprapubic region. Fack. 4 times in the last hour, and the pains have a nasty habit of occuring only after I start getting comfy in my room.

Wenky
7:59 AM
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Saturday, August 05, 2006

Hellzapoppin' by Whitey's Lindy Hoppers (1941)

Wenky
8:21 AM
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Just when you thought you've seen it all ...

The usual weekend fix of videos. =D

Quite alarming! Loved the dramatic change in costume - long live velcro! The front part's a little odd, it's got this modern feel to it .. not quite the usual Lindy styling I'm familiar with. The later part was modelled after the roots of Lindy - really reminds me of the old Frankie Manning videos like "Hellzapoppin'" where the blacks in the household do this wild version of Lindy while their white employers were out.

Wenky
8:03 AM
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Thursday, August 03, 2006

Haha, odd eh. Quite the opposite of what I used to feel towards the end. I was supposed to follow a personal tutor around, and to get my tutor to sign my logbook and write comments around this time. HOWEVER, my first experience in clinics proved to be such a disaster that I refused to go for any more if I could help it. Things learnt = 0. Silent tutor. Had to force myself to ask questions (the answers to which I jolly well knew I could easily find in a textbook) . Too many patients. I didn't get any chance to take any histories, or do examinations. So, do I just go and waste my time there? I didn't think so. But this means tutor has only seen me ONCE during these 2 weeks. Uh oh. Most groupmates are taking a break today; I'm going for clinics now just this last time, just to let tutor sign my book. Hmmmmmmmm. I can guess what the comments will be. "Need to see more cases and attend more (useless) clinics."

Just my luck. Such a stark contrast to other groupmates' tutors, who opened an adjacent room for them and ushered patients to them. And me? I sit in a corner like an overgrown carbuncle - a space-occupying lesion, as a groupmate so aptly named it - and behave like a piece of plain wallpaper that occasionally asks questions.

My tutor is ABSOLUTELY NICE, don't get me wrong. I'm just sick and tired of pretending to be enthusiastic when I was in clinics that day - every time a patient comes along, I jump out of my seat, look at the patient's knee/X ray/MRI, but that sweet invitation of "take a look at his/her knee and tell me what you see" never comes. Should I have offered? I'd like to see anyone try that on a grouchy tutor with 30 patients in 3 hours. I end up trying so hard to start discussions by asking stupid things like "I think that is a meniscus cyst?" or "Is Synvis indicated in this patient?"Alas. And BTW, the replies are almost always in single sentences. No such thing as "Yah, meniscus cyst. Do you have any other differential?" or "What are the treatment modalities you know for osteoarthritis?" In Glasgow, such enthusiasm would have earned a distinction in attitude, with the reward being the tutor becoming even more enthusiastic about imparting knowledge; and there I was, trying in vain to engage my tutor. And I learnt from my tutor's previous student that I am not the only one (good. So tutor doesn't hate me) - previous student described the experience as being treated like a ghost in clinics. Bleargh.

Wenky
7:09 AM
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Have been trying to make this blog as merry and colourful as possible, but I shall need an avenue to let some stuff out. Going to do that tomorrow morning when I wake up.

Wenky
12:38 AM
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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Ah, one of the guys brought a professional camera and finally! Some pics that really do these things justice. These are plants from the Drosera petiolaris complex, exclusively found in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, also known as the "woolly sundews" due to the presence of hair on their petioles.

Yep, really rare things, and perilously tricky to propagate as well. They are not self-fertile, seeds are utterly-rare to come by and take up to 2 years to germinate, and cuttings of any sort do not usually work. So yep. It took me a good 8 years to track the entire complex down, and obtaining plants of different genotypes so that seed production may be possible.

Drosera lanata


Drosera fulva "miniature form" - Northern Territory


Drosera aff. ordensis - Kingston Rest, Kimberley, Western Australia
aff. = affinis. An undescribed one that strongly-resembles D.ordensis, and with dramatic colouration.


Drosera aff. petiolaris "pincushion form" - Northern Territory


Drosera falconeri - Palmerston
Original site almost extinct.

During a rare flowering event:


Drosera paradoxa "pink flower"


Drosera darwinensis - Northern Territory


Drosera dilatato-petiolaris - Northern Territory


Drosera broomensis


Drosera kenneallyi - Fog Bay


And some of the stuff from Scotland!

Drosera rotundifolia - Rannoch Moor


And the bunch of sphagnum moss, doing surprisingly well here

Wenky
11:55 PM
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Pet Gecko

Yx took a vid of our infamous pet gecko, who has been living on the dining table for the last 4 years. It joins us for dinner sometimes, darting out to snatch a morsel of food - rice, usually. Adaptation in process? Taking what you can, even though you don't normally live on it. The night we shot this video, we gave the gecko a treat of some pieces of chicken.

Wenky
11:17 AM
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Caterpillar

I'm afraid I found the first caterpillar I can honestly say I kind of like. Not touching me, of course - no way. But it is cute! Damn, if only it wasn't a caterpillar, if only it had 4 legs. Any idea what it'll turn into?

Wenky
10:52 AM
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Yes. 4 tutorials in a single day, and there's this really awful lecture going on in this room for the midgets, with a REALLY boring lecturer. Huh. Bad memories. I'd have just skipped the whole damn thing if I were them. Hah .. and they take the most amusing histories. "The patient does not complain of biliary colic". Hmmm. I'd like to see the patient who can tell you that "I don't have biliary colic".

Great. No time to even sneak a nap in. Lesson, study for next lesson, find patients, get vexed because patient you want to see if suddenly and mysterious out of bed, lesson again, go back to find patient and get psychotic because patient you want to see (who was out of bed just now) has already been suddenly discharged, go and find another patient, no time to finish talking to patient or to study for next lesson, go for lesson, get fucked by tutor. Ooooh. Basic layout of a student's typical day - minus the minor irritants like rude nurses, silly people, crowded lunch areas, group dynamics and awful tutors.


Wenky
6:54 AM
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Tuesday, August 01, 2006

We've really hit the roof with this posting: 10 days, 16 tutorials. SIXTEEN! 3 for today, in fact. I'm never going to make it through the day. First one at 7.30am, and the last one late in the evening, I shouldn't wonder.

Doesn't help that I woke with a splitting headache that is stubbornly refractory to paracetamol - 4 hours of sleep for the last 2 nights. OK, last night was my own fault, I indulged in a salsa bar. Would have been lovely, if not for awkward company and being absolutely spent from a 12-hour day in school. The live band was fantastic though, the all-girl trio really heated up the evening with some great latin music. They even did a samba piece! OK, we kinda made a spactacle of ourselves by being the only couple to dance samba (in a restricted floor space, no less) while everyone else was salsa-ing to it. Ewww. Just wish that samba music was more popular, but I guess a dance's popularity lies in its simplicity. Salsa's so much easier to pick up in contrast, as are the other ones popular with youngsters. One baffling exception is hip-hop though. It's absolutely the singularly most difficult dance ever. But I suppose the no-partners-required clause really helps!

OK, off to school. The group decided to wear blue today - I'm going to see who remembered, or if I'll end up being the only idiot.

Wenky
6:35 AM
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Wenkyland

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