stolen colours

I’m an INFJ. I think, over the years I’ve changed from a Perceiver to a Judger. It can’t be helped, I suppose.

Last day of Ophthalmology posting tomorrow. I quite enjoyed this posting.

Went to the travel fair at Suntec City today. It was madness, I tell you, madness. Queues and queues and more queues, though it was well-organised. There were these booths where reps from the various destinations gave out brochures and answered questions, such as these charming Japanese gentlemen who gave me a glossy autumn print.

There was an ad for a 8-day trip to Jiuzhaigou priced at $498 onwards. All the various agencies printed that ad in their flyers and loudly proclaimed it a “VALUE BUY”. We asked, but it turned out that the eventual cost would be about $1200. Isn’t this misleading potential customers? Can such an ad even be printed?

The fair wasn’t that satisfying.

Went for lunch at Kuriya at Raffles City. (I wanted to try Melt, but we looked at the food on display and realised that no male would down that willingly.) We loved Kuriya at Shaw Centre, but found this Kuriya not worth the price. Went to Shimbashi Soba later for the dessert deal.

Photos below:

Elegant interior.

Penance’s lunch set ($18.30): Soba (hot/cold), tempura donburi and salad. Closeups below.

Kuriya’s little sister outlet is Shimbashi Soba; though the soba at Kuriya is a few dollars more expensive. I couldn’t discern any difference; but it’s still very decent.

I present: Chilli Pot – the Musical.

Top left: starting position, stick tucked under arm.
Top right: turns to the front to face the audience.
Bottom left pic: takes off hat and bows; brandishes stick.
Bottom right: puts hat back; turns to face the left.

The chilli is flown in from Japan. It left a mild spicy sting taste on my tongue for minutes after I’d finished the soup. Qiong was rather enamoured by this charming little coffee pot too, when we were at Shimbashi Soba on Friday.

Okay. After lunch we headed to Shimbashi Soba at Paragon for the afternoon dessert special. From 2.30pm – 5.30pm daily, $5 gets you any dessert on their menu, together with a hot beverage.

Penance’s dessert, which consists of vanilla icecream, various jelly cubes, red beans, some bits of fruit. It comes with syrup.

My dessert comprises green tea tofu (!!), vanilla ice cream, some fruits and red beans. It came with fried soba chips on the side.

The desserts were nothing much, though. They looked a lot prettier than they tasted.

Got this from min.

Social Life at Hogwarts

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I’m glad for MSN. It filters out 80% of what I feel and say, such that I come across as a mostly rational being instead of a monster.

Qiong and I met up yesterday to view the photography exhibit, “The Kiss, Singapore” at the Epsite gallery. The theme of the competition was: “Take a photo of a couple kissing on the streets of Singapore like Robert Doisneau’s famous Kiss at City Hall and who knows, it might just become the next icon of love and passion!” I really liked the winning photo by Lloyd Chan, and the one with two sisters and a brother by Chew Peng Foo; but Qiong thought the winning photo was a little too wild.

We spent ages walking around looking for a place to have dinner. (Too crowded! Too expensive! Too unhealthy!)

Finally ended up at Shimbashi Soba. Both of us got one of the sets, which at $18.80++ gives you a bowl of soba, fish cutlets, teriyaki chicken and salmon sashimi. The salmon was fresh, and the dishes were tasty. The soba is really nice since it has some bite to it.

Closeups of the various components.

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This ophthalmology posting is proving to be physically tiring. Clinics ALL day, where I have to stand, and sometimes contort my back to peer into the back of someone’s eye. I’m feeling useful as a translator, though, since most of the doctors in the department aren’t Chinese. This may well be my first happy posting at NUH (it’s my 5th), partly because of the wonderful secretaries, the lectures and the air-conditioned environment. I was in the OT today; they even have these sweater things for you! But my fingertips were still turning blue despite the extra layer.

I think ophthalmology is somewhat like astronomy. The photos captured of the retina look like the surface of planets. (Mars comes to mind most often because of it’s reddish hue.) The retinal tears give the prettiest photos, in my opinion; but that’s one condition you don’t want to have. Some links to photos below:

A retinal tear
A corneal transplant
A central retinal vein thrombosis
A central retinal artery occlusion
Valsalva retinopathy
Rhegmatogenous retinal detachment

And this site has a lot more photos.

Please have a look even if you aren’t doing ophthalmology right now. These images are beautiful; but the underlying pathology causes people to lose their sight.

Still, there’s only so much interest one can muster.

Random photos that I meant to put up some time ago. I finally have time to, now.

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Well, at 5pm, the ophthalmology practice session commenced. I’m quite pleased with myself since I managed to see the optic discs of 2 people.

After that, I was really tired; but we were still determined to go out and somehow shake off the gloom that the Paeds test left us with. It was a horrible, painful limp on the expressway to Marina Square; and by the time we arrived there were queues everywhere. Thus we jaywalked over to Millennia Walk and ended up at Paulaner Brauhaus. Photos below.

There’s nothing like good food and friendly wait staff to cheer one up.

The appetiser was bread with meat paste. Yummy, but the paste’s rather salty.

We shared the Sudhaus Selection, a a combination of grilled roast meats: roast duckling, spit roasted chicken, roast caraway pork, grilled pork knuckle. It came served on a bed of sauerkraut, German dumplings and braised cabbage on the side. The minimum order is for 2 persons, at $28.50 per person. The meat was good. I was stuffed though I ate only 35%; Penance was similarly stuffed after eating 60%. We couldn’t finish it. (p.s. I think the pork knuckle tastes like a more solid version of sio ba.)

Purple cabbage. It’s pickled with some kind of berry? It’s sweet, crunchy and juicy.

I don’t know why the Germans call it a dumpling. Tastes like it’s made of flour and potato. Wish I hadn’t wasted stomach space on this.

Well, it was a nice dinner out; and Millennia Walk is NOT crowded at all, which is a plus point.

Paulaner Brauhaus
Reservations: 6883-2572
9 Raffles Boulevard
Time² @ Millenia Walk
Singapore 039596

Horrible test. I brought this upon myself since I didn’t fully maximise the time I had yesterday. Had to tune out the guys during lunch today. I’m getting pretty good at this tuning out business since I’m usually not interested in what they’re saying at all. Grr I need new company soon.

Tutorial at 2pm with Prof Q. I’m just a little bit proud of myself when I can tell who’s from Penang, from the way they speak English and Hokkien.

And tutorial at 5pm. This is rather weird, the last day of a posting ought not to be like this. But if the doctor is willing to spend time after office hours to teach, there’s no reason why we can’t attend.

I had my clinical test today. It wasn’t that bad, just a case of bronchiolitis with no complications whatsoever. I just screwed up the discussion with the testers a little.

No mood to study now. Penance’s looking up Muse videos on youtube and I’m sorely tempted to do the same. Ah well. I’m going to buy the ipod video over the weekend. Yippee. There goes $550 dollars (I want the FM transmitter and a case too.)

[edit] I just found out that Apple will be releasing a new ipod nano with an aluminium casing and 8GB of memory. Argh. I think I might have to wait a bit. This sounds good.

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