the production line.....

10...15? maybe 20 boxes...... envelope after envelope, newsletter after newsletter, the repetitive motion of slotting one into the other, one fluid motion. Community Placement Program, or CPP is more like exploitation of free labour. furthermore, it's not like we 2nd year med students dont already have enough work on our timetables. The school just has to throw in such pointless, time wasting activities for us, to include in our assessment.

Putting together a couple of hundred envelops together individually, among the 6 of us, was not easy task. Repetitive and Mundane.

drained.....

this week has been particular exhausting.the reasons, still unknown to me. went to the gym twice, which is not as much s I would personnally have liked. This week was so tiring, I actually woke up, sat on my bed and pondered, and decided to skip the morning lectures and just go for tutorials in the arvo. consecutive 6-8 hour days aren't exactly doing justice to the mental and physical health of the monash medical students.

On top of that, the amount of Self-Directed learning that we have to do on our own is immense. Pharmacology+Anatomy+Physiology and throw in some bull shit lectures on health promotion and learning how to use the internet.This is serioulsy frustrating.
Cardiology is over, and now Neurology. Cranial Anatomy alone was quite a shocker, this weekend shall be spent mastering it.

CPP this week was a total waste of time. Took a 1+ hour car ride at 8am in the morning into the city, to sit around and ponder about this thing called the learning agreement.Thereafter, we were asked to come up with a manifest or inventory or nominal roll, depending on how you wish to call it. Allocating delegates into hotel rooms and adjusting them to their requests. to do more justice to the people who actaully did the majority of the work, sophie and annie, your work was much appreciated.



Thai food. Best food, Worst Service. Ying Thai 2 along Lygon St serves one of the best authentic Thai food you can ever find in Melbourne or anywhere else in the world. It was my 3rd time there last night.Waited 30mins for a table, and then 45 mins for the food to come. On top of that, they got an order wrong and refused to admit their mistake. But with unrelenting perseverence, we got the order we asked for, as well as the wrong order which was thrown in free of charge. I like your food very much Ying Thai, but you could do some improve the service quality. I won't be seeing you anytime soon, but the next time I see you, I had better be having the best dinner.

I really hate how medicine has taken away the social life i longed desire to have since coming to Melbourne in 2006. So, I've decided to take the subject Medicine by the balls, and SQUEEZE THE F#$%&*NG HIGH Distinction out of it. Watch out, the JTRain is coming thru.

poor in spirit and in wealth....

paid danielle for the damaged that I dealt to her suzuki swift a few weeks back. this set me back just over 400 bucks.damn, when something like that happens to your own car, you feel the full force of it. Driving and riding in my parent's Saab back home, it did not occur to me, how much a part of your life a car can be. A minor scratch on the surface, feels exactly like a deep cut into your own flesh. Imagine running a razor blade across your cheek, when you shave. Thats how it feels.

Been feeling really tired the past few days. Coffee no longer exerts its sympathetic effects on me anymore but i still drink it in the hope that the placebo effect still holds true. Couldn't wake up for 8am lecture this morning. So the 2hours of school today, was a rare luxury. Visited the hair salon today to get my hair trimmed, the hair stylist Katie was real fun, and not to mention quite HOT. If only the rest of the australian girls were friendly and nice like hairstylists, life would be just perfect. Not to say that they are hostile or anything, but the majority of them can do better.

They could also work on their general knowledge of the world.

"I'm so surprised you come from Singapore, because you speak English really well and clearly."

Hello!? Please get around and see the world, Singapore's first language happens to be English. Just because my skin isn't white does not necssarily mean, I should't be able to speak English.

white girls, you all may be hot and i like you all but you could do better in the IGNORANCE department.good haircut though, so I shall see you again soon.

diarrhoea day.

today i had the worst shit of my life.it was never ending, always coming. the harmless rumble, the asphyxiating feeling. finally when i couldnt hold it in anymore, i let it go. it wasn't a pretty sight, and it's memory will not be short lived.for as i type out this blog, the monster inside me os awakening from its slumber yet again. what could i have fed its agony, i do not know. was it yesterdays milk? the week old yoghurt? or the bucket of portabellos?i need some good old hot tea....this ranks about second to the episode of stomach flu i had back when i was 15.

now back to the agenda...

so i have to come up with something known as the 'Learning Agreement' this is for the community placement I am currently doing, and it will outline the lessons I hope to take away from my time spent there, as well as how I would be able to serve the centre, within my abilities.

What I hope to achieve after 12-weeks:

1.Learn the Billings Ovulation Method.
2.Learn the benefits of natural fertility.
3.Improve my inter-personal skills with people.
4.Improve my organisational skills in helping with the seminar.
5.Learn how non-profit organisations are able to work effectively on a tight budget .
6.Learn how to work effectively in a team, with new people I meet for the first time.

How I hope to contribute to the organisation

1.Work that I put in will contribute to a very successful seminar
2.Ideas that I give would help with the donation campaign.
3.Contribute to reinventing the perception of the Billings Method, from its 'old-fashioned' image.
4. Help increase the awareness, help in its promotion efforts.

I have 2 weeks to do that. So i shall keep the creative juices flowing for the moment...and add on to it again later...

Took a 5 min drive to top up the gas in my car, and now the stomach feels alot better.thoroughly enjoy the cool night air, blowing thru when I'm crusing in my ride.
if only gas was cheaper, i'd do that more often. Tonight, its more Cardiac Pharmacology to go through. Peace.

I need a STIFF SHAFT!!!!

school ended early today, and by early i mean 3pm. Thank goodness for long daylight hours in summer here in Melbourne. To capitalize on that, I headed down to the Glen Waverly Public Golf Course, for a short 9-hole game.

didn't play well today.had a few pretty good drives going between 220-240m, so thats alright for now, but the short game was terrible.Having said that, the greens today were horrible, wet and mushy from the slight drizzle, and overnight rain. Can't understand why my irons havent been performing as of late, slicing the ball even more than when I use my driver.

which brings me to the main point of this blog. The R-flex shaft on my Callaway Big Bertha isnt doing my golf game any justice.I've got a pretty fast swing, and with that the shaft tends to WARP qutie a bit, and the club head does not come into contact with the ball accurately most of the time. To alleviate this, I've been having to down-hold on the grip, shortening it slightly, to minimise the warping. With this, obviously comes the downside of lesser distance given for greater accuracy.

a stiff-flex shaft with a stiff tip would do my swing more justice, and it SURELY will improve my game drastically. something below...would be sweeeet.....

a little bit of spontaneity makes a good day.....

did a few spontaneous things today. firstly, decided to skip the morning classes adn headed down to Monash Medical Centre, and sneak in on a procedure. The idea of observing an angioplasty was really cool, howevery to my dismay, all i got to observe were 3 angiograms on 3 different old guys. This was a morning well spent nonetheless, being the first time seeing how an angiogram was carried out.

MMC looked quite good contrary to popular belief. The 'oohs' and the 'ahs' reverberate non-stop at the mention of The Alfred, but nothing much about the MMC. I would not mind going to MMC for an entire year, when i start my clinical rotations in 3rd year.

I have this Lebonese woman for a clinical skills tutor, who uses this paternalistic approach to teach students. I bet this is the exact same way she interacts with her patients. Being so rigid with the simplest of procedures and at the same time, being out of date with stethoscope technology. IF SINGLES-SIDED Stethoscopes weren't designed for a cardio-vascular exam, WHY WOULD LITTMAN'S TOP OF THE LINE CARDIO STETHOSCOPE BE SINGLE SIDED!!!!! woman, you are a GP and for goodness sakes don't embarass your self, you are a medical doctor none the less. This is the second time you haven't give me the correct answer to a question, which answer I already know.

3rd STIKE ..and YOU ARE OUUUUUUUUTTTTTT!

Another spontaneous decision today....decided to go down to the driving range to practise my swing. Was hitting better today, though not as good as I would like myself to be. Going to go for another golf game tomorrow, hopefully it all turns out well.

Pretty glad the weekend is here again, school work is piling up and there is so much to catch up on. Just being in the Cath-Lab today, and not having any questions to ask the consultants pretty much shows how much I have yet to cover.

the first tuesday not playing golf....

so today was the first day of my community placement, which was in Fitzroy North, at the Billings Ovulation and Research Centre. At this place, people who are either wanting to conceive or avoid a pregnancy come to learn how to go about it the 'natural' way.

Now, Billings' idea of Family Planning is totally different from that of contraception. Where contraception, aims to avoid conception at ALL costs with the aid of chemical ( the 'pill') or mechanical intervention, Natural Family planning is about the woman understanding the physiological changes, as a result of the hormonal changes in the body and the way it is expresed physically. With this understanding, the woman is able to 'read' the FERTILE and infertile periods during her menstrual cycle, and thus plan her days of intercourse to coincide with days of Maximum or Minimum fertility. THIS MUST NOT BE CONFUSED WITH THE RHYTHM METHOD. Amazingly enough, the success rate for avoiding pregnancy is 98-99% whilst that for conception is 78%, which is much better that IVF or AI. This also happens to be the no.1 choice of natural family planning in the Baby Booming Capital of the World, China.

Another interesting fact, which I personally have some doubts with. It seems, that if a couple had a good understanding of the Billings Method, and the woman knowing the physiological changes taking place inside her well enough, she can actually plan which day to have intercourse, so as to determine the child's gender, with 95% sucess. Although it's only the first day, it seems like I have another Health Promotion task on my hands already. Nonetheless, the Billing's Method, will be a very useful life skill to have, especially since I will be a doctor in the not so distant future.

So Ladies, in time I shall be more well versed with YOUR BODIES than YOURSELVES. Beware, the Jman is in the midst of revival.

A late start.

I've just learnt that in this year, I would be forced to embark on a medically irrelevant project and this blog is just to record the mostly mundane but sometimes erratic nature of a medical students lifestyle.

CPP ( Community Project Placement) starts tomorrow, and to the Billings Ovulation Centre I will go. I'm actually quite excited about this weekly activity, from which I will formally become the guru of natural fertility in prevention and promotion.