Saturday, 28-Aug-2004 7:56 PM

The clock's ticking.

Oh my goodness, time is creeping up on me and I'm getting panicky about everything that I have to do. I'm not going to my end of year ball/formal thing because the US Board exams is on the same day and the following day :( Sigh.

No one told me my dad was flying in this morning - they thought it'd be funny to surprise me. Last night however, while in the car, my mom accidentally slipped by asking me if I wanted to eat this certain type of fish and I said no and she said 'that's alright, I'll eat it with Dad tomorrow.' I was like 'what?' and she just sat there all quiet.. then goes 'uhm, I mean in the next few weeks.' Then at dinner, my sister slipped by saying 'so what time are you picking Dad up tomorrow?' to my mom. I'm not fond of surprise visits!

Today we also had a celebration for my nephew. He's one month old! Well, almost. We were going to celebrate tomorrow but apparently it's the day when the ghosts come out?? Chinese thing..

Anyways, there are some people that look better in real life and some people that look much better in photos. You know what I'm talking about right? Then there is the third group, which I fall into. Bad in real life and worse in photos. Hence no pictures of me in it! They also played the wedding video that my sister edited and I'm like...completely editted OUT of it!! Thanks a lot!

Oh and apologlies to those I haven't emailed back! I'll be on a two week break in mid September so you can kick my butt then :)

Monday, 23-Aug-2004 9:22 PM

It was like Hurrican Charley blew me over.

Whenever I have early starts and I don't trust myself to get up, I'll set two alarms to go off. My normal alarm clock and my cellphone, which I place on my desk, some distance away from my bed. This morning, after hitting snooze on my alarm clock, my phone goes off and I get out of bed to stop it but I couldn't walk straight and I stumbled toward my desk and fell over. I completely missed the phone. Second time around, I pick the phone up but end up dropping it while struggling to stand up. I tried to walk back to the bed but something just wasn't right. I felt like my centre of gravity was at the top left quarter of my body and while I tried to move straight, I kept going leftward (if that's a word) and I fell over again. I ended up lying face down, horizontally across my bed with my legs hanging off and stayed there for another ten minutes before getting up again. This time I tried to walk to the toilet which is down the corridor. It must have looked like I was drunk because I still couldn't walk in a straight line - kept heading left! When I came back, I pulled my timetable out of my bag to see what classes were scheduled and when my breaks were and I noticed that my whole body was shaking, the hands moreso. This freaked me out and I decided to skip the morning class to get more sleep. I'm still wondering what that was all about. Postural hypotension perhaps? Man, it's made me feel more for the patients I treat. Whenever I listen to them, sometimes it's hard for me to know just how much pain etc they're feeling and empathise with them because I've never experienced a lot of the things other people have. But now when someone talks of dizziness etc, I'll have a better clue about it.

I just found out today that I have a new patient scheduled in this Thursday and since I haven't done my third competency exam, you know what that means. The only thing is, he's coming in with an EAR complaint. An EAR!??!! How am I supposed to do my range of motion testing? My motion palpation testing?! My orthopaedic tests?? I don't even know how to use an otoscope! Bloody hell. Fingers crossed that it goes well.

Sunday, 22-Aug-2004 7:05 PM

Let me fall in love with your tastebuds.

While I'm stressing out trying to study for the US Board Exams (which means I have NO time to do my other assignments and research project etc), I try to keep my engines running with some exercise, fruit and nuts, green tea, ginkgo brahmi and a daily chat with Salami. Out of the blue today, he said:

'Have you heard of a fruit called jackfruit?'

'Yes. I like those! Why? Did you try some?'

'I bought some. Hey! I also bought lychees'!

'But you hate lychees.'

'I don't hate lychees! '

'Yes you do! '

'Well I'm training myself.'

'Why??'

'In case there's a day where that's all you'll want to eat. '

Okay, maybe now that I've run that conversation over a few times in my head, it's kind of stupid but at the time it was so cute :D

It's re-fueled my heart's engine for the day.

Thursday, 19-Aug-2004 11:25 PM

Inbetween breaths I'm studying chemistry all over again.

Wednesday, 18-Aug-2004 0:24 AM

My poor Boston is going to get desexed tomorrow :( He's dancing around outside my door right now. I can hear the bell on his collar jingling. Sigh. I'm cringing at the thought and I don't have the balls to tell him. Okay, that was a very bad time to throw a pun in :/

Saturday, 14-Aug-2004 2:56 AM

So it's almost 3am. You must be thinking gees that girl is crazy getting up so early to watch the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics. I actually just got home from a club. Birthday dinner and drinks at a friend's house, then into Oxford St to a club I don't want to name because I'm now rather embarassed I went there.

I'm too old. Sometimes, inbetween the alcohol flowing through my blood, I get moments of absolute clarity and I'll realise I'm moving my body around and everything seems so uncoordinated and just plain stupid. Then I get paranoid that all those people who just hang around the sides to watch, are amused by my lack of dancing skills. Luckily the moment passes and everything seems all blurry again and I'm back to being such a good dancer :D hahaha.

My feet hurt. My hair stinks like smoke. I'm tired. Tomorrow I'm semi working at the rugby game, semi checking out cute guys. Anyways, it's going to be crazy because no one picked up the equipment from uni today (tables, tape, towels etc) and there are four girls assigned for tomorrow and none of us know anything about rugby :D

Wednesday, 11-Aug-2004 10:58 PM

Boston has promoted himself to the 'one bannister balancing act' now. He used to stand with his hind legs planted on the bannisters (where they make a corner as they come together) and bend over between his legs to chase his tail. Now though, he thinks he's good enough to balance just on one beam and chase his tail. He slipped though! You can see him (in my rather blurry pictures) holding onto two of the railings below him. Dumbo :)

Monday, 09-Aug-2004 8:45 PM

I was in Melbourne for a seminar during the weekend. I know I used to put that city down a lot and this time I thought I'd go with an open mind but I'm actually quite surprised to find that it actually looks worse than I remembered =/ I suppose everything looks worse when the clouds are grey and the gods are teasing you with icy cold winds and rain is trickling down over your eyes.

I'm not sure if we were supposed to pay to use the tram but since everyone seemed to just get on and off, that's exactly what we did. Got to see quite a few things in the very short time I had. The seminar was excellent! The only downside was the fact that there were quite a lot of people there. The bigshot guys from the States were holding this year's seminar so I guess everyone wanted to be there. Hopefully it's helped me with my skills because I'm still not getting a lot of my adjustments.

Photos :

Thursday, 05-Aug-2004 10:30 PM

Just when I finally started getting my bodyclock set back to normal time, I have to wake up at 4:30am to catch a flight interstate. Ugh..I wish I was a fast packer.

Monday, 02-Aug-2004 5:50 AM

5am rant.

It's 5:50am. I don't know what timezone my mind and body are in right now but I'm a little depressed and missing him a lot. I think all my feelings are made worse because I don't want to start school today. I always get like this right at the end of holidays. I've never been one to look forward to class and I really want to change that. I mean, so many people I talk to love going to school. Why can't that be me??

I hope I can last the entire day of class and clinic at night. Not really looking forwad to that either...I'll probably be rusty with my technique.

This is going to be a fast and hectic 6 months. I hope hope hope I can handle all the stuff I'm in for.

So, to go back to bed or not? I have this image in my mind, of him and I on the sofa. We were just talking and he had said something sarcastic so I pointed to the wall where the light was casting our shadows onto and pretended to punch him with my oversized hand. It turned into a shadow brawl with dogs and ducks and alligators and a whole bunch of disfigured members that we had made up. I don't know how it ended but I do remember thinking ...this is how I want it to be.

Sunday, 01-Aug-2004 2:33 PM

New member of the familia!

I'm home! ....and as of a few hours ago, I'm now an aunt! My brother's wife had the baby this morning :) It's been a hectic 48 hours. I only flew in yesterday morning and my mom flew in this morning, last minute decision. Good timing I guess because the bub wasn't due in until next weekend. Anyways, the baby (who is nameless at this point in time) is so cute! He has one eyebrow that resembles my brother's (ack!) and loves to pucker his lips and make kissing gestures (I'm sure that'll be a hit with the ladies in years to come).

I got him a little stuffed monkey =)

On a side note - I had a teeny accident this morning where I opened the car door into my face =( I thought I'd cut myself right under the eye but there's no cut, just a big bump that went purple but now it's down to a nice cherry red. If only it were a tad more to the side, I would consider opening the car door into the other side of my face so I would then have prominent cheekbones.