stolen colours

Today was the first day of the SGH Ortho posting. Everyone so far has said that it sucks here as they’re all too busy to teach, which is rather strange as all other postings at SGH are apparently fabulous. Myself, I think that the daily bedsides are a good arrangement; and having come from a horrid O&G posting where my group had virtually no tutorials for half the posting, we’re pretty much used to self-directed learning. Our supervisor couldn’t have put it better when he said “You have effectively 10 days in your posting here.” And I gulped; my tester for the end-of-posting test coats students in honey and chews them up. My mentor here has abandoned me, so I shall have to pester some one else’s mentor to sign my logbook. We are all practical people. The logbook must be signed.

The afternoon was spent in the clinic with a very nice orthopaedic surgeon who spent so much time explaining things to us. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very good afternoon for students, with 30-40% of the cases being plantar fasciitis. The surgeon felt very apologetic and murmured “they shouldn’t even be here.” >.< Why doesn’t their GP treat plantar fasciitis? Why refer and let someone else complain about the workload when earning the money? Perhaps my naive questions will be silenced in time to come.

After clinics ended at five, we went back to the ward to clerk for Friday’s 7.30am tutorial. The second case we clerked was really interesting. Lady who had a fall; BUT someone noticed and documented an unusual but obvious-now-that-you-mention-it feature some days after admission. And then in the case notes, someone wrote “Consulted Dr D and Internet.” I think that the Ortho people have a healthy sense of humour, albeit unwittingly.

I’m really tired. I’ve never stayed till 7.30pm for the first day of a posting at a new hospital before. (And to make matters worse we got locked out of the lounge where we left our bags. Had to wait for someone to unlock it.)

Survey from Stejuste.

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I’ve upgraded to wordpress 2.1. While I welcome how blogging from Opera isn’t such a pain now, the livejournal crossposter plugin can’t seem to be activated.

[edit: it works now!]

Today was unexpectedly free. I had nothing to do, no anime left to watch. Some brainwave hit me, and I started watching Season 4 of ReBoot on youtube, almost 6 years after it was broadcast. I couldn’t stop. I love this series. It pioneered 3D animation in television, but the main selling point was the story and background. The first two seasons were good, the third was much darker and more emotional, and the fourth doesn’t disappoint at all. I love the characters. There’re:

• Dot Matrix, the type A Command.com
• Bob and GlitchBob – way way way cooler than Bob, IMHO
• Enzo, the over-eager and very intelligent kid
• Matrix the angry man;
• AndrAIa, the babe with the cool name and a weakness for bikes
• Mouse, the hacker with katana
• Hack and Slash, those bumbling idiots
• Phong, the ancient Yoda-like sprite. He rebooted into Yoghurt in one game. *dies laughing*
• HEXADECIMAL, the Queen of Chaos. If there’s one reason why I go by the nickname “masque”, it’s her. Hexademical’s ultimate sacrifice in season 4 was amazing.

Other great things about the series are the witty references and the musical interludes. Love that clip of Dot singing You’re Alphanumeric

Dot: Where’s Enzo?
Phong: He’s in the Read-only Room.
*dies laughing*

Bob: Luke, use the sauce! THE SAUCE!
Enzo: Errr…right. *topples giant bottle of chilli sauce and kills Rocky Racoon*

I want the Official ReBoot Artbook, to be released this year. XD

Okay. More later.

I’m really, really tired. I’m screwing up both the test tomorrow and the writeups >< the latter have yet to be started.

I think Body Integrity Identity Disorder is a rather chilling phenomenon. Horrifying, even.

Argh down with flu and currently non-functional. Penance too, and his voice has dropped two octaves, heh. Wouldn’t have gone to the hospital today (and probably infecting everyone around me), but we had makeup tutorials. The radiologists were awfully nice to go through their lectures again for those of us who missed them during the KKH posting. And nearly fainted during the bedside tutorial too.

Thurs – back pain presentation
Thurs – mid-posting test
Fri – hand in writeups

ARRGH.

Where do I start?

We arrived at 2pm and queued. At that time there were around 30 people in front of us. Of course, it expanded laterally later as their longlost relatives and acquantainces joined them. It threatened to rain, but didn’t. Made friends with the girl in front of us, who was there all alone. I’m glad I have friends with the same musical tastes.

Slightly before 7pm, we got into the venue. Initially, we were 7-8 people from the front. They started blasting songs from various assorted bands from the speakers. The crowd was quite high already, judging from how they did a mass impromptu karaoke session. We were really very packed at that moment. For some reason, quite a number of people were smoking. I don’t get it. You’re watching a concert. And you smoke? And some continued smoking during the concert, as Penance says. I cursed, “May you die of lung cancer at age 40. And may I be the one telling you that you have 6 months left.” I’m kidding about the age 40. Med students aren’t cruel people.

I couldn’t complain about the venue. Fort Canning Green is designed such that the standing area slopes down towards the stage. This is good in the sense that the audience gets a good veiw of the stage. It’s also a small, cosy venue. I didn’t know how they squashed 6500 people in, but after experiencing how packed it could be, it’s a believable figure.

It all started just before the concert. The crowd was impatient. Some idiots decided to do a sideway wave thing. I got separated from Penance. He ended up somewhere behind.

When the concert started, I found myself pushed all the way to the front. Gravity and rowdy people. I somehow ended up 2nd from the front barricade, but with my face squashed against some tall boisterous guy’s back and 50kg of someone else against my own back and elbows at my scapulas. I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t move.

It was awful. 10 minutes into the concert I started wondering when it would be over. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t take any photos or videos. I couldn’t hear the band – being so far front, the sound balance from the speakers was distorted; and the guys around me were hollering the lyrics in my ears. I couldn’t hear Matt, isn’t that tragic? Absolutely tragic. Most of the time I was concentrating on keeping myself upright, my nose in a pocket of air, and my camera in my hand. I lost my Asterisk. It was horrible. I was all alone in that fucking moshpit when I didn’t want to be there in the first place.

It was crazy. When the swaying started just before Muse came onstage, a few petite JC girls had to be rescued by the security. In the intro of Knights of Cydonia, another 3 people went out. Throughout the concert, at least 2 people went out during each song, either bodysurfed to the front, or carried by their friends.

There were a few highlights, I’m sure. Matt came pretty close to me at one point. And in the later part of the concert, I was surrounded by some pretty nice guys who offered to help me take photos and steadied my hands when I tried to video.

If you want a concert review, ask someone else. Penance grinned at me widely when I found him after the concert, saying “That was amazing!” I sure didn’t have much of one. I’m bitterly disappointed and frustrated, and utterly heartbroken. My favourite band comes to Singapore, against all hope, they perform in a small, intimate venue, the ticket cost only $85, I looked forward to this day for a month and queued for 5 hours before getting in, and I screwed up my concert experience. It doesn’t help that everyone says it was superb.

It’s going to take a while before I can listen to a Muse song without being reminded of this day. They’re gone from my radioblog.

Dinner, in an early celebration, was spent at Town Restaurant at the Fullerton Hotel. For $48+++, the spread was decent. No photos, I’m sorry. I didn’t dare to bring my camera to the buffet spread.

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Got tagged by raydance, so here goes!

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

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Written in the case notes of a patient with a fractured radius:

Tripped and fell. FOOSH!

Okay, the exclamation mark wasn’t there, I just added it in for effect.
FOOSH = fall on out-stretched hand.

Sometimes acronyms actually make sense.

Some comment replies. Don’t you miss the good ‘ol days when we had entire blogspots consisting of nothing but comment replies? *stares pointedly at rie*

SJ: oh no. they’re doing golden compass?! *meep* i can’t take it. it’s such a bloody depressing series. and i know i won’t be able to *not* watch it.

Well, I only thought the ending of the trilogy was depressing since they didn’t end up together. Yes, I’m a sucker for happy endings. The girl MUST end up with the guy. Whether both dead or both alive, I’m not too fussy.

SJ: i used to have such a crush on one of the transformers when i was a kid.

Erm. I like Rodimus Prime ^^; That’s a really hot colour scheme, you must admit.

SJ: del Toro is quite cute in the special features – he’s horribly vulgar but in a funny way. reminds me of Peter Jackson, but sort of .. i don’t know.. more.. earthy

Oh yes! So I’m not the only one who thinks so! About the Peter Jackson resemblance, I mean.

I want this Shoe Wheel!