MSN Conversations: Confessions

I've been using MSN Messenger more often these days, as there's no better way to communicate with friends without the trouble of getting my ass out the door. Plus its free, as opposed to the phone!

But the longer I go on MSN-ing, the more I realise how lazy I have been with real life expressions. Blame it all in the emoticons and shorthand such as "LOL" and the like. It has gotten too easy to express feelings, and even fake them online.





Messenger: That's nice to hear :)

Real Life:

A smiley is a good substitute for actually smiling. Because smiling uses too many facial muscles. And creates unnecessary wrinkles. Oh, yeah...I see a lot of smilies in SMS messages too. Makes me wonder if the sender is smiling in real life each time I see it. Maybe I'm thinking too much...






Messenger: LOL. That's so funny!

Real Life:

No one really ever laughs out loud while typing LOL. Imagine how silly it would look laughing like a maniac in front of the screen. Especially when typing out "LOL"







Messenger: This is just too funny, my tummy's aching! ROFL (roll on floor laughing)

Real Life:

Well, even if I were very amused, the most I could manage is a slight chuckle or an ear-to-ear grin. Rolling on the floor laughing? Never actually tried it before. It would be quite cartoonish to see, I think. Who even invented the term in the first place?





Messenger: No, you're not boring me. That's so interesting :P

Real Life:







Messenger: I gtg. Very busy lor. Gotta do assignment/finish chores/do laundry/end world poverty/...

Real Life:

Excuses, excuses, excuses :P






Short talk: I met this cutie working at one of the shops in pyramid. She had this really awesome smile. Like when she beamed at me, I couldn't help but smile back. Didn't bother to go beyond small talk though. And ALMOST felt guilty for walking out not buying anything. Heh heh

Chinese T-shirt

Calling all readers who can read chinese characters! Your assistance is kindly requested.

Okay, enough with the formalities. I just bought a T-shirt from sunway pyramid today. Cheap too, less than RM20. But that wasn't the reason for my purchase. The T-shirt was not so fancy, just some chinese text in front. The shop assistant said that the characters meant "Sarawak". Feeling super patriotic and proud of my home state (we have Starbucks you know), I bought it before you could say "Cehh, Stabakks only at airport nia le..."



Wait, I can almost read it...is that two "huos" on top of that thingamajid for the second character?




So, does it really say Sarawak? Or were they trying be funny and fooled this poor banana into wearing a shirt that said "lala leng zai studmeister" or "Me love u long time"(I'm getting paranoid here)



For all I know, it could mean "No.125-Roast Pork Belly"


The lesson here is, I must learn how to read Chinese. Past kindergarten level I mean. Hats off to you if you could confirm this with me!

My cover of My Chemical Romance: Cancer

I just listened to a song today and I thought it was nice. Well, nice in a sad way. because it was about dying of cancer. Found the chords and tried it out on my guitar a bit...Here goes

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On a brighter note, I had a great week following the final exam. Went out with Li Wen to check out The Gardens shopping mall in mid valley. Was nice to get to know her better as there wasn't much time for hanging around when I was in medical school. And I spent the whole of today with my relatives, many of whom I haven't met in years. I got to shop in the newly opened Pavillion mall..and it was huge and fascinating with its range of upscale brands. Had a wonderful meal at Parkroyal, and guess what? I got to choose the wine, more specifically french Sauvignon Blanc red wine. It was good :P

And I did not even fork out a single cent!

Old school: My Girl

I like oldies, so here's my cover of My Girl originally sang by The Temptations. Not like I have a girl to sing about or anything, but oh well...

Saturday, November 3, 2007

I'm Yours cover

Su Wen introduced this song to me...and I kinda liked it, especially towards the end. As usual, I tried singing along, but Jason Mraz sings it really high. Man, I do envy his voice, but I tried one part anyway. Words kinda get jumbled up :P

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IL EXAMINO...

The exams are closing in, with only about 2 weeks to spare! And I'm pretty much still unmotivated to study, for a medical student at least...the others are all scrambling to finish their revision. Meanwhile, I'm still daydreaming about the year end hols, when I get to go back to Kuching and meet up with my old pals and pretend to still have a social life and chill at Damai beach again.

I haven't been getting much sleep lately, making me sluggish and lethargic in the daytime...which only adds to the un-motivation. And I've been getting huge eyebags, typical of some medical students.


say hello to my eyebags. I may look happy but I was really very tired when I took this pic...








I've got 2 full years of medical stuff to cram into my tiny head, so I'm resorting to devious methods to finish my revision. Behold, my textbooks:



Medical Immunology Made Memorable






Master Medicine: Microbiology & Infection





Anatomy & Physiology Made Incredibly Easy. Damn straight I wish they had more books like this! See, it even has cutesy cartoons and all:




Meet the pancreatic cells!





But, I was even tempted to buy this:


If I ever graduate and become your doctor, Be Afraid. Be VERY VERY AFRAID




I can imagine all my classmates shaking their heads in disapproval. Yeah, I'm one big a$$ lazy bum! And not worthy of the grand title of med geek :(


By the way, there's this one memorable way to remember the cranial nerve distribution. It's another dirty mnemonic, like most medical ones. Here goes:



Ooh-Olfactory
Ooh-Optic
Ooh-Opthalamic
To-Trochlear
Touch-Trigeminal
And-Abducens
Feel-Facial
Virgin-Vestibulocochlear
Girls-Glossopharyngeal
Vaginas,-Vagus
Such-Spinal accessory
Heaven!-Hypoglossal



Makes me wonder if the creator of this is some horny gynae? *shudders*

Anyway, it has served me well, and I'm sure it'll be useful to you if you're doin med. All the best to those having exams now, and to all meddies too!

I slaughtered Chris Daughtry

Haha..my attempt at singing Over You by Chris Daughtry. Imagine a zombie singing and you're not that far off...Key is too low for me. But who cares, I still like the song

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Jejak Langkah

I'm so annoyed with the pile of assignments in front of me. Can't it just do itself? I'm so flustered to the extent that I'm singing in Malay to soothe my nerves. I recorded it. It's Jejak Langkah by Tohpati. What next, Mandarin or Cantonese songs?

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How to Be Yourself

Have you ever been told to just be yourself? Or told that you're not acting like yourself? Or told that you should be more Malaysian? I guess this has flustered and confused many people, myself included.


Ah, young grasshopper, how do you react to this?


My best guess: We would try to prove them otherwise, that we are not fake poseurs. But I would advice you to do nothing and ignore it. ANYTHING you do to prove that you're being yourself would make yourself seem more insecure and more importantly, FAKE.





On weekends, I work part-time as an ah long (loan shark). Honest!





To be frank, that is not even a valid question, as we are all ACTORS in life. Yes, you heard it. We act out our lives based on how we perceive we should be acting. The obviously fake people are just horrible actors, and stumble around awkwardly like drag queens. To be natural, you have to be talented and convincing. Think George Clooney in ER. Or the cast of Grey's Anatomy who make convincing, if overly dramatic, doctors. To paraphrase Shakespeare, life is a stage, and we are actors in a play. Confused already?


We behave and act based on our ideals of who we should be. We hem ourselves into different roles in society. We feel accomplishment as we selfishly seek and gain approval from around us. For example, a doctor should be respectable and authoritative. A teacher should be nurturing and stern. An emo guy should be, well, emo. A nerd should stay with his books. All feminists hate men. ALL BLONDES ARE DUMB. Thus society places expectations on us to stick to our stereotypes. So, we are not permitted to act contrary to these expectations. Any nail that sticks out will be hammered back in.



All blondes are good in...um.....making beds, right? Damn straight they are!





I beg to differ. I stand firm behind my conviction that everyone is entitled to act however they like, and not be criticized for it. We should be allowed to find our true selves, to experiment with roles, and not stick to the status quo. We should be striving to improve ourselves daily, to try new things, to think outside the box once in a while. Change is imminent for some of us, as we metamorphose into hopefully better people. We are given the power to choose who we want to be. That's why God gave us a will.


So, my sage advice to you would be to reinterpret "being yourself" as "being more confident". After all, confidence is sexy, no? We wouldn't be accused of being fake if we were comfortable in our own skin. Feel free to be different, but don't do it for anyone else's sake other than yourself. Insecurity and people-pleasing behaviour are as obvious as Micheal Jackson's nose.

Nerding

I can't blog for now. Really too busy. Lots of stuff to cover within a month. Two years worth of med school. Here's something I found rather funny:

1 You have ever said “Netter is god”.
2 You can discuss autopsy/ anatomy over a meal [x]
3 You own a 4 color pen
4 It just isn’t enough colors for you
5 You use more than one color to take notes
6 You have use up more than 6 highlighters in the past 6 months
7 you have ever highlighted something YOU wrote
8 you retype handouts given in class
9 you haven’t had a date in 3 months [x]
10 you haven’t had a date since entering med school
11 you have not been able to remember the normal term for something because you were thinking of the medical term (ie reflux for heartburn)
12 You get more sleep in lecture than at home
13 You know the correct spelling for pruritus
[14 - you also know what it means [x]
15 You have ever asked a question in class [x]x]
16 - The prof. didn’t understand the question
17 - you didn’t believe the answer the prof. gave
18 - you went to look it up to see if they were right
19 You can’t hold a conversation on anything other than medschool
20 You skip class to study [x]
21 You’ve said you didn’t do well on a test on which you beat the mean [x]
22 You spend more than 15 hrs a week on e-mail
23 You have a callous on your finger from writing
24 More than one professor knows you by name [x]
25 When you ask a question, a new professor has said “Oh, I’ve heard of you”
26 You can name more amino acids than past presidents
27 You use more than 5 acronyms an hour when talking [x]
28 you actually know what PERRLA stands for
29 You know all the steps of the TCA cycle
30 You do not read PTA as parent teachers association
31 You can remember the muscles in the forearm [x]
32 You know the structures in the urea cycle
33 You know the dermatome distribution [x]
34 You can’t remember what you had for breakfast
35 You can’t spell world, much less backwards
36 You’ve ever been sexually aroused by the breast shadow on an X-ray
37 You equate “morning stiffness” with Rhematoid Arthritis
38 You actually know normal values for plasma Na
39 and for K
40 Missing class causes you extreme stress
41 You have seriously asked someone “So how does that make you feel?”
42 You have asked will this be on the exam [x]
43 -Just after the prof. said it wouldn’t
44 You identify with Deb on E.R.
45 You have made a medical joke [x]
46 -no one laughed [x]
47 -You figure they just weren’t that far in their studying [x]
48 You wear your stethescope around your neck on the bus
49 - you don’t even know which way the thing goes in your ears
50 “SOB” means shortness of breath to you [x]
51 You have gone to student health with suspicion of a disease you have studied [x]
52 -within 3 days of the lecture
53 You have answered a question in class
54 -asked by the professor
55 -it was a rhetorical question
56 You can quote lines from the movie “Malice”
57 -you believe them
58 You can flip your pen over your thumb
59 - with both hands
60 - you do so throughout class
61 You have corrected a professor in class
62 - the rest of the class didn’t understand the lecture to begin with
63 You know how to calculate specificity [x]
64 - positive predictive value [x]
65 - anion gap
66 - you can’t balance your checkbook [x]
67 You don’t know what the weather was like for the past week [x]
68 You don’t know what the weather is like right now
69 You actually talk in open ended questions
70 DIC isn’t a slang term for the penis in your book [x]
71 You think B- is a bad grade
72 you have stressed about a pass/fail class [x]
73 You study during most of your meals [x]
74 You saw nothing abnormal about the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
75 You draw all of the slides not already provided in the handouts
76 -including the cartoons (humourous type)
77 Anatomy makes you hungry [x]
78 You would even consider saying “Ease back on my finger at your own pace”
79 You know the size of a RBC
80 - you don’t know the size of a football field
81 Your eyesight has worsened by 10 pts or more in the last year
82 You have the library hours memorized
83 You have your own seat in the library
84 You score more than 95 on the Epidemiology final
85 You own more than one white coat
86 You have debated between giving up sleep or eating in order to find more time to study [x]
87 You started studying for boards more than 2 months in advance
88 You have never received a personal invitation to discuss your grades with the dean [x]
89 A tie is the only addition necessary to what you normally wear when you go to see patients
90 You wear scrubs to tests
91 You have made plans to study on a beach during vacation [x]92 - you actually did
93 You have a designated seat in lecture
94 - You have ever asked someone to move from “your seat”
95 You sleep less than 4 hrs a night
96 - you think that is plenty
97 - you have thought about cutting back
98 You study more than 35 hrs outsid of class
99 - you think you are a slackard [x]
100 You think everyone answers yes to most of these questions [x]

My total score: 32

Scale
<20 You’re not in Med school. Go back to your party and leave us alone. We have work to do.
20-35 Either Med school is a breeze or you like the sound of “Senor doctor”35-45 Gotta love that Primary Care
45-60 Well, I never really thought about MD/Phd, but now thatyou mention it…
60-75 Your social life is shot, might as well try to earn lots of money
75-90 Which surgery subspecialty did you say you liked?
>90 All hail, great Med School Nerd master.