stolen colours

Argh! I have wasted my short postings!!!
Staff is still very much unmade ><, and I’m hoping inspiration will strike since I have no idea how to put some parts together. And the last short posting is anaesthesia, which is one of the busier ones.

Wouldn’t you think that Ki67 sounds like the name of a handphone model? Oh no. It’s a proliferation factor! *laughs maniacally*

I saw a dead baby today; poor thing smothered in bed by an unconscious adult. At first glance, she looked like she was sleeping; I observed for a few more seconds, and realised that no baby could lie so flat on her back, nor be so still. A little wax doll.

There was this wall of detachment that came over me the moment I entered the viewing gallery. I recalled the days spent in the M1 holidays dissecting stiffened cadavers. (The secret: choose a spot under an aircon vent, that blows the formaldehyde fumes away). Lift the top layer with the forceps, and slice away at the fascia plane with the scapel. And always hold your tools like you would a pen.

There’s a character called Min in The Wheel of Time, thus I can’t help but think of Min-that-I-know everytime I read about her! Well, she’s tall (I think…or was my impression coloured by the real person?), wears boys’ clothes, and can see images about a person that foretells his/her future. She’s one of my favourite characters, though she doesn’t appear much.

Next week’s the forensic pathology posting. I’m looking forward to that, but anything’s got to be an improvement from 9am-5pm lectures.

Okay. That’s all for now. Back to reading. My eyes hurt.

stone: thanks for the advice.

joyce: Hey I also don’t want to look like Nanako if I can help it!

This must be a record for me. I haven’t blogged in 6 days. Not that I haven’t had time or inclination to; I’ve logged into Wordpress daily, stared at the empty box for blog entries, then closed the window.

Well, I haven’t been doing much with my life of late. It took me rather long to finish the first book of The Wheel of Time, and it’s already the least tedious of the lot. I found the second book in the Medicine Library. That’s finished, too; so it’s off to the library tomorrow to borrow the third book.

A horrible list of to-dos:
1. Create the Staff. YEEACH. So not looking forward to it; but had lots of help from Lynn, so it should work.
2. Pathology writeup.
3. Plastic Surg writeup. (don’t ask.)
4. Cut hair.
5. Get jacket.

Ongoing tasks:
1. Drag self to gym or pavement on a regular basis.
2. Teach Sister without screaming at her. This is no easy feat, especially when she asks me to teach her at 11.25pm at night. That is sacrilege! The time after 11pm is mine and mine alone; not even school work gets in the way of that. I was SO FREE the whole day. Why does she have to wait till 11.25pm, or whenever I’ve just changed to go to the gym? *&%^#$@*# Already 16, but she still thinks the world revolves around her.

Why does my sister bring out the worst in me? Ugh.

I’ve borrowed the first book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. Just need my annual dose of fantasy, heh.

It was a productive day yesterday. I dropped off my jeans for altering, then walked about Orchard Road looking for a jacket. I found one that I liked, but at $125, it’s rather steep. The expedition reminded me of a jacket-hunting trip with Radish and Shmeen.

We were stopped on the streets by one of those advertisers.

Advertiser: Are you 21 or above?
Us: Yes.
Advertiser: Are you students?
Me: Yes.
Advertiser: Oh then it’s okay, sorry for stopping you.
*some metres down the street*
Penance: NOOOOOOOOOOO! She thought I was working already! *tugs at t-shirt and jeans*
Me: Maybe it’s me. *recalls that top is low cut at the back*

Dinner was at Kazu! Probably the best sumiyaki place in Singapore?
It’s at level 4 of Cuppage Plaza.

We were there before it opened, so we managed to get a table. Otherwise, it’s really very popular. And oh, the waitresses are such motherly people.

The menu is VERY extensive. I really had no idea what to order, since I didn’t want any of the sets.

This was definitely the most adorable chopstick holder I’ve seen in my life.

The meal started with complimentary cabbage. It was much crunchier and sweeter than any I’ve tried before, thus I assume it’s imported from Japan. There’s a reddish-brown dipping sauce for it..some kind of miso paste?

The appetizer from one of the sets.
Left: Tofu. It was…creamy? I can’t describe it, but I’ve never tasted tofu like that.
Middle: Some mashed up concoction (egg?) with a few slices of fish.
Right: Bean sprouts and konyaku jelly in a vinegar-based dressing. This was veyr refreshing.

The rice comes in a small serving, so as to preserve stomach capacity for the meat. A separate bowl of rice costs $3.50 (grr); as does a bowl of miso soup, which is really very tasty.

Unless otherwise stated, all the items below were simply delicious.

From left to right:

Top left: mushrooms stuffed with chicken, chicken breast, chicken thigh, chicken gizzard
Top right: liver, chicken balls, quail’s eggs, gingko
These two trays constituted Set C (an all chicken set). I liked everything except the liver, but that’s quite me.

Bottom left: foie gras, wild chicken, wild chicken. My first time eating foie gras! It’s…just pure oil. Ugh.

Bottom right: chicken with wasabi. (It had a fancier name.)

Top left: unagi. I would definitely order this again.

Top right: a dish recommended by the waitress. Chicken rolled in mushroom, with curry sauce. I loved this, but my dinner date says “it’s a YOU dish. very healthy.”

Bottom left: Chicken wing. This was absolutely fantastic. Very savoury, crispy, and tender inside.

Bottom right: squid tentacles (nothing great, though the waitress recommended it), wagyu beef stripe and pork belly.

It’s amazing how a good dinner puts one in a good mood. I was beaming for the whole evening.

On the way out, we stopped by Ohso Ramen.

Gyoza from Ohso Ramen at Cuppage Plaza. They were…very salty. $4 for 6 pieces, available at the takeaway counter so you don’t have to join the long queue for seats.

Steamed on one side, and fried on one side. Penance painstakingly separated the individual gyoza without mishap. Me, well, I perforated one.

Then went back to Orchard Road and looked at more jackets. Sigh.

Shmeen was right about ENT being a favourite posting thus far. I almost didn’t dare believe that they were surgeons; everyone was so nice.

Tonight I started re-reading the Nightrunner series.

Patients can be quite wonderful people, especially when they sit through my clumsy attempts at examination without flinching. Today I got a few tastes of that, and sad to say, I’m hardly as stoic as most patients.

Got this from ko’s blog.

(more…)

A lot of narcissism ahead.

(more…)

ENT posting is really fun. Most of the surgeons here at TTSH are funny guys who don’t take themselves too seriously; they’re the disciples of the resident Prof in spirit and humour. “ENT don’t have to know a lot one, all common sense!” But to their credit, they do know a lot and they’re passionate in imparting their knowledge to us students.

As a department, they’re rather inept at IT. One surgeon was yelling at the computer because he couldn’t submit a certain form (but his fault actually, because he didn’t fill in all the fields.) “The IT department, they are the EVIL PEOPLE.” But he takes really pretty photos of his garden and has a DSLR on his desk.
And another one showed his senior this Excel file that had the monthly operating schedules, gushing “This thing is amazing, it’s smarter than me! Not that it takes much, hurhur.” And sheet after empty sheet came up on the screen. “Oops. Wrong file.”

The people here are really nice. That left me flabbergasted when I witnessed two complaints being made against two very nice doctors in the space of two days. The first one was from this hysterical woman who has been seeing many doctors for ear pain, but has been repeatedly been told that there’s nothing wrong with her ears. There’s some language barrier, so she again thought that our dear doc was saying “there’s nothing wrong”; then went out of the room and screamed. Gosh. And all he did was start from the root of her problems, which is her allergic nose. Got cut off before he got to the ears, I think. And the other was a teen; but well, he’s got guts to make a complaint letter given his age.

I don’t get patients.